Pursuing The Horizon (Run On, Run On)
by kitashvi
Summary: Seven years ago, two years into the Jaeger Program and a year before "are you fucking kidding me, you can't let minors pilot Jaegers" protocols were in place, the Bakura twins were hot shit and a hopeless miracle. (Or, Bakura and Ryou learn to play well with others. It does not go as planned.) Pacific Rim AU
1. Chapter 1

_here's the trashbag au we were literally blackmailed into writing, but now it's indulgent and addictive to write and hopefully somewhat decent._

 **title is from a stephen crane poem "i saw a man pursuing the horizon" because tell me that doesn't sound like bakura's entire life. (also, tell me that "a man said to the universe" isn't malik in a nutshell jfc.)**

 _for the sake of clarity,_ _ **yami marik**_ _is just_ _ **marik**_ _here, and_ _ **hikari marik**_ _is_ _ **malik**_ _. that's relatively standard for our fics, but let us know if there's any confusion._

 _\- kit_ & **ash**

* * *

"Bakura, are you sure you can—"

"Ryou, I swear to Christ, if you ask me that one more time I'll feed you to Leatherhead personally because I," Bakura tells him as he shoulders open the door of their room, "am fine."

"You," Ryou confirms, flopping onto the nearest bunk and watching his brother scowl at the mirror just inside the door, "wheedled and threatened your way down to a month of rehab instead of three because of a chronic case of jackassery, aren't wearing a sling like you're supposed to, and are still down one functioning arm on account of blatantly refusing to take care of yourself." He flips off the general direction of his brother as Bakura makes an exaggerated show of slipping his broken (fractured, honestly) arm back into the sling around his neck, and asks, quieter, "What do you think?"

Bakura slumps down right where he's standing and props his uninjured arm on his knee. "A Shatterdome's a Shatterdome, what's it matter?"

The lengthy pause should've tipped Bakura off, but instead he's still fiddling with his dog tags when Ryou says, "We're not the only new transfers. Two other Ranger pairs came with us."

Bakura looks up with a jerk, eyes narrow. "How the fuck did you—"

Ryou gestures vaguely in the direction of the bags he dropped near the dresser. "I may have taken a look at some files."

There's a battered tablet stuffed between mismatched socks and MMORPG-themed underwear (Ryou, _honestly_ ) in his brother's duffel, and Bakura unlocks it one-handed and flips through the files until he finds one marked _'this is some BULLshit'_. "Yeah, yeah, taken a look at the _copy_ Otogi gave you; that punk's such fish food if anyone finds out we have this." He grins, teeth sharp, and scrolls down until he hits a list of names. "Bakuras," well, that was them, no surprise, "Ishtars, Mutous. Mark-III, Mark-IV—Mark-V?" He glances up from the tablet at Ryou's impassive expression. "I thought the Australians were piloting Striker Eureka."

Ryou's face betrays nothing. "They are. This is another one."

Bakura jerks around to face his brother fully and slams his busted arm into the side of his own bag. _Ow._ "Another Mark-V? Ryou, they only made the one—" He pauses. "That's not what's bothering you. The fact that there's an entire _Mark-V Jaeger_ that no one knows about _isn't_ the problem here."

Ryou lets his arm loll off the side of the bed until his elbow hyper-extends, which Bakura has always thought is _gross_ , for the record. "Did you notice their names?"

Ishtar and Mutou, plural. "Could be married couples."

"They're not."

Oh. "Siblings."

Ryou heaves a sigh, long-suffering and exhausted—from their trip or preemptively for what's going to amount to be a shitty time in the very near future, Bakura's not sure. "Twins."

Bakura is considerate enough to put Ryou's tablet out of harm's way before he slams his uninjured fist into the ground. "Fuck!" This shit again.

Ryou arches his eyebrow like he can hear Bakura's thoughts. "This shit again."

Seven years ago, two years into the Jaeger Program and a year before "are you _fucking_ kidding me, you can't let _minors_ pilot _Jaegers_ " protocols were in place, the Bakura twins were hot shit and a hopeless miracle. Two Marks of Jaegers had come and gone and the Kaiju were getting bigger and smarter and meaner and there were enough twin studies being vomited out of the neuroscience and biochemistry communities to allow two fourteen-year-olds to attempt a neural handshake. The running theory was that twins could circumvent the cons of Drifting—they were practically the same person, same memories, they could be faster and stronger and smoother than pairs who weren't.

And they were. But not by enough.

Bakura runs a hand through his hair and resists the urge to grip hard out of sheer frustration. He keeps reading instead. "Mutous just shipped back in from New Zealand, looks this Shatterdome in Domino is their home-base. And the Ishtars just came down from Alaska, poor fuckers." Bakura glances up again and scowls at his brother. "Those names sound familiar. Do we know them from the program?"

In a long list of things that should probably have been reconsidered, he and Ryou had been put in charge of vetting the first few waves of twin recruits, and while the Mutous and Ishtars sound familiar Bakura doesn't remember giving the "the world thanks you for your service and courage in volunteering but personally I think you're a fucking idiot, are you aware of how painful drowning can be" speech to any faces that matched those names. But it's as Ryou starts to respond that the overhead speaker chimes and an incredibly hassled-sounding tech snipes, _"Could all available Rangers report to LOCCENT immediately, all available Rangers to LOCCENT immediately—"_

Ryou straightens up with a hassled sound of his own and looks around blearily for the boots he just toed off, and Bakura is grateful for the moment he looks away because trying to get up by resting his weight on his fucked-up arm is not ammo his brother needs. And yet, just as he gets up and straightens his tags, Ryou hip checks him on his way to the door with, "Need a hand, Bakura?"

Bakura's first attempt at a smart reply is drowned out by the same voice adding, _"Yes, Mokuba, that means you, I don't give a flying Kaiju shit that you wanted a nap,"_ so Bakura shoves his arm back into his sling and follows his brother out the door with a grumbled, "Let's get this the fuck over with."

/

 _Immediately_ turns out to be fifteen minutes later by virtue of the Domino Shatterdome being a fucking bullshit maze of steel corridors and vague banging sounds in the distance, and by the time Bakura and Ryou see the shiny chrome and massive monitors of LOCCENT all the other Rangers have already gotten there. The Ishtars and Mutous are easy to pick out on the basis of looking exactly alike, shocker, but Bakura is more interested in the resident pairs that have come out to greet them. Ryou waves as the LOCCENT doors shut behind them. "Good to see you again, Mai, Anzu!"

The Ranger pairs of Harpie Lady and Tomb Raider were old friends from the start of Bakura and Ryou's careers—at sixteen years old, Anzu had been closest to their age when they first passed Ranger training at fourteen, and Mai and Bakura's constant, vitriolic banter during press conferences was the talk of a number of tabloids. In the beginning, Bakura hadn't understood what he'd thought was a massive rift in personality types for a Drift-compatible team—

Anzu whirls on them, wraps Ryou into a tight hug, and smacks Bakura right on his injured arm. "You promised to call us if you got transferred out of Hawaii, you little shit!"

—but Bakura had been swiftly and violently made aware of exactly how similar Anzu and Mai could be. "So sorry," he drawls, "I got distracted, what with the broken arm and all."

One of the short twins gestures at his cast and Bakura can't get over the fact that he looks like he's fucking _twelve_ , seriously. "Which Kaiju did that?"

Ryou and Bakura exchange a wry smile. "Dunno. Didn't have time to ask its name before we slit its fucking throat."

"Oh fuck, I heard about that." One of the techs looks up from his soldering. "'Overkill in Oahu', that was you guys?"

Bakura can still feel Kaiju blue splattering all over his side of the Jaeger like it's his own arm, hot and wet and it jars him out of his thoughts when Ryou answers, "Yeah, that was us."

Clearing her throat to pull all the eyes in the room back to her, Mai jerks a thumb at the new pairs in turn. "Your escapades in poor anger management aside, asshole, have you met the new guys? That's Atem and Yugi Mutou, in Duel Monster, and Marik and Malik Ishtar in Daddy Issues." Mai arches an eyebrow. "That would be the Mark-V."

Bakura chokes on a laugh. "Daddy Issues? That some sort of joke?"

Marik and Malik exchange glances—unlike Atem and Yugi, these two were at least considerate enough to style their hair differently. One of them, Malik maybe, fiddles with one of the stack of gold bangles on his wrists and shrugs. "Some sort, yes."

"I don't think anyone piloting a Jaeger called 'Tomb Raider' has room to comment on anyone else's name."

Bakura turns on his heel, smooth-like, to see Seto Kaiba leaning against a bank of computers, smirking. A foot away, Mokuba sways on his feet, exhausted and with his Drift suit only halfway off—they must have just returned from a call down the coast. The Kaibas had compatibility scores second only to twin Ranger pairs and a press scandal second only to Bakura and Ryou; where the Bakuras had been under the world's spotlight for revolutionizing the Ranger training program, the Kaibas stirred the media's frenzy when Seto inherited his father's lucrative gaming company and promptly switched gears and markets to revolutionize the Jaegers themselves. Bakura matches Seto's smirk tooth for tooth, "You're just pissed your shiny carbon-steel nightmare doesn't have the kill record of our analog darling."

Ryou rolls his eyes so hard Bakura thinks they might stick like that for a moment—they both remember the starstruck look on Bakura's face when he'd first seen the Kaibas' custom Mark-IV, Blues Eyes, not that Bakura would cop to it _ever_ —and Seto just arches an eyebrow. "I wouldn't touch your _darling_ with a ten-foot pole, not when there's a Mark-V in the bay."

The shorter short twin—Yugi, if Mai's half-assed hand gesture was at all accurate—steps away from his brother to lean next to Seto and peer through the LOCCENT deck into the bay where the Jaegers loomed. "I think Jounouchi would probably fist-fight you for first dibs, Seto."

"Jounouchi can go die in a fucking—"

"You all know each other?" Ryou interrupts, to Bakura's chagrin. He would've really liked to hear the end of that sentence.

Atem looks like he wants to personally rend Seto limb from limb and sell him by the pound when the Kaiba rests his hand on Yugi's shoulder, and Bakura sees Ryou arch an eyebrow. That looks like a personal problem right there. Yugi smiles. "Seto and Mokuba worked with us under Grandpa Sugoroku."

Bakura's heard that name before too, but can't place it before Ryou asks, "Grandpa Sugoroku? You mean Metal-Mind Mutou?" He turns to Marik and Malik. "And don't tell me, your older sister is Brigadier General Isis Ishtar?" Ryou looks back at his brother. "Bakura, we're in the presence of Jaeger _royalty_."

"You're one to talk," Mokuba tells him, bouncing on his heels. "You're the Bakuras, right? First ones to pilot a Mark-III, passed Ranger training at fourteen," the kid is blubbering and Bakura scowls at the attention, there's only one place this list of accolades will end, where it _always_ ends, "you're the reason for the T-BOM initiative!"

The room freezes over. There it is. As if noticing for the first time, the Blue Eyes and Harpie Lady pilots—and every fucking tech and grunt and lackey and soldier in the goddamn bay—look over their new comrades and realize they're standing in a room of carbon copies. Bakura looks around the room and sees four new people too many who are going to fucking die choking on seawater and pipe dreams because he and his brother walked into a military summit with a catchy acronym and a stupid idea.

Ryou freezes up next to him and Bakura shifts to block him from the rest of the Rangers—'Two Bodies One Mind' was Ryou's idea and his noose if Bakura were willing to let him hang himself on it. "Yeah," Bakura says, "that's us."

He's got half a mind to apologize to the other twins for _literally_ getting them into this mess, but the door hisses open before he can speak, spitting out someone important-looking. The man honest-to-fuck clicks his heels as he comes to a stop before the Rangers and the smile on his face so simpering that Ryou and Bakura share an exasperated glance. Even his voice is politician-grade spit-shined when he says, "Welcome, everyone! Some of you know me already, but I'm CO of the Domino Shatterdome while Marshal Mutou is assisting in Mexico. My name is Wallace Marshall."

Bakura feels like a slightly more mature adult when Yugi says before he does, "So you're Marshal Marshall?"

Marshal Marshall smiles. "Just Marshal will do."

Bakura snorts and mutters under his breath, "Sure thing, Just-Marshal," and it's absolutely worth Ryou elbowing him in the ribs.

Just-Marshal didn't seem to have heard him because he continues, "If you would all follow me to the Kwoon Room?"

Bakura sees Malik mouth "Kwoon Room?" to his brother and echoes the sentiment, can't understand why they need to head to the training room when they're already paired up and Drift-matched, but they all trail after Just-Marshal anyway. It's out of habit that everyone beelines for the matchup list as soon as they set foot in the room, even though no one is entirely sure what they're doing there. Mai's long legs outpace everyone—she's even taller than Marik, almost as tall as Seto, holy _shit_ —and snatches the clipboard out of its cubby.

Mai glances over the roster for the Kwoon Room matchups and looks up, sharp eyes fixed on Bakura. "Hey, you didn't fill out your info all the way." She rattles the clipboard at Bakura and Ryou chuckles. He knows where this is going; he's heard Mai and Bakura having this exact conversation seven years running. They both know Mai could easily pull up Bakura's dossier and find out his first name, but the brothers suspect that she'll get more satisfaction if she tortures it out of him.

Bakura is considering the merits of fighting one-handed before a stern look from Just-Marshal stops him trying. He scratches absently where the cast meets flesh and grins. "You don't say?"

Atem peers over Mai's arm at the roster—Christ, wasn't there a height minimum for Ranger training? He and Ryou were taller when they fucking enlisted nearly a decade ago than the Mutous are now. "Don't you have a first name?"

"Not one that's any of your fucking business."

Atem bristles and takes a step forward just as Just-Marshal claps his hands together and every head in the room looks to him. "I'm not sure how much your respective COs have told you about the reasons for your transfer, but we have reason to believe that Domino and the surrounding coastal areas may be seeing an increase in Kaiju attacks. As I'm sure you've noticed, we've requested the involvement of T-BOM, and while two of the six incoming Rangers are currently sidelined," Just-Marshal nods at Bakura, who takes it as his cue to demonstrate his cast to all and sundry, and then glances over at the Mutou twins to Atem's thunderous frown, "it is my belief that we have a strong team capable of defending the coast."

"Oh yeah, what the fuck's benched you?" Bakura gives Atem an once-over that Ryou once described as a _noninvasive vivisection_ , because Atem and Yugi both look fine. "Inhaled too much hairspray?"

Atem gains a whole half an inch when he straightens and Bakura revels in the way that he looms over the smaller pilot, can hear Ryou shift his weight behind him, ready to grab his brother if things go south because _Atem's_ going to be the one who needs protecting, when Yugi chimes in from over by the weapons rack. "It's me, actually."

Ryou's fingers close too hard around his wrist and force him back a step and Bakura's gaze slides, predatory, to Yugi. The kid's as much as admitted to weakness and Bakura won't stop until he flays him open and picks it out. "Oh? You look fine to me."

His bones grind together under Ryou's grip and he can feel the other Rangers watching them, but Yugi just shrugs and says nothing, leaves a gaping silence that Bakura would just love to fill with the sound of snapping bone—

The sound of wood tapping against concrete snaps him out of his daze, and he sees Malik lean against his staff and rest his hand on his hip. He's the picture of lazy consideration but his eyes are sharp. "What else?"

Just-Marshal looks at him. "Excuse me?"

"Two of three T-BOM pairs are benched, but that doesn't explain why you brought them here instead of rehabbing at their respective Shatterdomes until they could pilot again and just transferring in someone else." Malik and his brother do that silent conversation twin thing that Bakura realizes actually does look unsettling when someone else does it, and Malik adds, "Let alone why my brother and I were brought here."

Just-Marshal sighs and says, "This was an opportunity," and keeps talking over Ryou's scoff of " _There_ it is," in the background, "an _opportunity_ to determine what exactly made the T-BOM successful. Duel Monster and Tomb Raider are both down a pilot, but that still leaves us with four viable Ranger pairs, Blue Eyes and Harpie Lady included."

Malik and Ryou put it together at the same time, their respective brothers can see, but Malik speaks first. "Yes, but one of those pairs would be Ryou and Atem, who aren't— _ah_. I see." Malik scrubs a hand across his face and shakes his head hard enough for his jewelry to rattle. "You're going to shuffle us like a deck of fucking cards, aren't you? To see if this is just a twin thing or if we can play nice with others, too?"

Bakura hopes Just-Marshal feels as cornered as he looks, because the room full of Rangers is suddenly buzzing with dissent. Drift compatibility wasn't a fucking coin toss, it took luck and blood and _work_. "For the moment, we only intend to rearrange established T-BOM pairings to, _yes_ , test the possibility of exchanging twins and seeing the same improvements to standard Jaeger—"

"No." Bakura steps back because he knows that tone in his brother's voice. He's been on the wrong end of it and has the titanium screw in his jaw to prove it. "Absolutely fucking not," Ryou snaps, rolling his staff between his fingers in agitation. "This is _completely_ counterproductive! Why would you separate pairs you _know_ are faster and stronger and break us into—into _subpar_ Jaegers?!"

Just-Marshal doesn't miss a beat, and he sounds too smooth and too slick for a man with a room of veterans turned against him, and Bakura realizes Ryou's been baited into having this exact conversation in front of this exact group of people. Across the room, he sees Marik's grip on his staff tighten until his knuckles stand out white when he comes to the same conclusion. "Because you're the only remaining _whole_ T-BOM pairs. We've got more than enough single strays to spare, and we need to know if there's a way we can use them."

Bakura lunges before he even processes that he's moved, before his brother can stop him, because he's heard this particular mix of snide blame and saccharine condescension enough times in seven years that it's like a straight shot of lightning down his spine—and it's always, _always_ aimed at Ryou: _this was his idea, his success story, why did they keep dying, why didn't he try harder, what were they missing, why can't he keep his fucking brother on a leash_ —and his fingers close around his commanding officer's throat so hard he can feel the air fan out of Just-Marshal's mouth across his wrist. Bakura puts his weight into it and between his fingers and solid brick, Just-Marshal was starting to fade.

Bright pain flares in his stomach and Ryou appears out of the corner of his eye, bracing against the wall and shoving the staff he's wedged between the two men like a crowbar, and Bakura flies away from his prey to skid across the mat. Ryou turns on his heel with the practiced precision of having made Bakura eat dirt a thousand times before and slams the staff into the rubber an inch away from his left ear, but still pulls Bakura to his feet when he grabs the end of it and winks. The real definition of brotherly love, right there.

It's as he's following Ryou out of the gym and potentially the hell off this base that he hears someone (Marik, he thinks) talking behind them. "We owe our loyalty to them more than to you."

Malik echoes his brother's sentiments. "If you're not careful, you won't have any T-BOM pilots left at all."


	2. Chapter 2

_his chapter involved a lot of ash using vi as an unwilling human puppet and demonstrating various fighting patterns while i tried vainly to write them down. we ultimately determined that the fight scenes should be left to the one author who's actually a fighter, or otherwise blessedly vague of all the technical stuff._

 **honestly, writing this chapter was like pulling teeth, and i'm looking forward to the next chapter, which was already 90% written in the first days of this fic.**

 _do let us know how you like it, as we aim to please (well, and indulge ourselves with ridiculous AUs, but two birds, one stone)_

* * *

Ryou shoots his brother yet another pointed look as they step into the Kwoon Room the next day. Bakura throws his hands up in defense, but it would be more convincing if he wasn't also sporting the largest shit-eating grin Ryou'd ever seen. He jabs his finger at the bench in the corner and waits until his brother is seated and hopefully out of his hair before he picks out a staff from the weapons rack and settles in to wait.

But, despite strict orders to _please for the love of all things holy, keep your goddamn mouth shut or I'll feed you your own feet with the hopes you'll contribute more to the world as an ouroboros_ , Bakura sprawls out on the bench and watches him stretch for painfully few peaceful minutes before, "You excited?"

Ryou waits for the telltale pop of his hip before he straightens. Near as he can tell, they have a few more minutes before everyone else starts filing in for their rescheduled compatibility testing. "Hardly."

Bakura raises his bandaged arm above his head and studies it absently. "We haven't exactly sparred with anyone except trainees since we were kids. I'm looking forward to watching you kick some ass."

The wood feels cool under his sweaty palms and Ryou spins it over the back of his hand again and again until he calms down. This isn't a scenario he had ever planned on dealing with, whether out of some misplaced hope that they would both live to see the end of the war or because deaths in the Bakura family tended to come in twos, and despite Bakura's glee Ryou isn't looking forward to today's proceedings. Bakura notices his silence and sits up, frowning, but Ryou puts up a hand. "I'm fine." He pastes on a smile that he's pretty sure looks natural. "Though I'm not sure how I feel about you living vicariously through me."

"Mm, should've thought of that before you used my side of Tomb Raider as a battering ram," Bakura grins and waggles his broken arm—out of the sling _again,_ Ryou was going to skin him, "Besides, this is just another way the eggheads can test their weird twin hive-mind theory."

"I resent being called an egghead." Ryou and Bakura both look up as Honda walks in, looking over something on his handheld. "But you're not wrong." He finally looks up at them a minute of awkward silence later. "If we're able to successfully extrapolate your compatibility from Ryou's data, Bakura, then we would only ever have to test one twin out of every set."

"You make it sound like you can buy them prepackaged at the grocery store, Honda." Mai smacks Bakura's knee off the bench to make room for her and her copilot as they walk in. "Kid, didn't anyone teach you any damn manners?"

Bakura sits up and moves over without much grumbling and Ryou is impressed. "We were raised by wolves," Bakura snipes at her, shoving his arm back into his sling.

Mai barks out a laugh in response and elbows Anzu. "Speaking of feral animals, is your boyfriend coming down to watch?"

"I think Jounouchi is still doing some repairs on Duel Monster," Anzu tells them.

Ryou remembers that name. "He's the one who's going to fistfight Seto?"

"Who's going to fistfight Seto?" Mokuba asks, as he and his brother trail into the room, looking slightly more conscious than they did the day before.

"Anzu's boyfriend, apparently," Bakura supplies from his spot on the bench. He flaps his uninjured hand at his brother in a way that Ryou interprets as _come here_ , and he lets himself be manhandled to sitting in on the mats while Bakura braids his hair back.

Seto settles on the stairs with Mokuba and looks at Ryou and Bakura over from across the room. "Isn't that just fucking adorable?"

From the laugh Anzu tries to hide behind her hand and the sudden absence of one of Bakura's hands in his hair, Ryou ascertains that he and his brother flip off Seto in unison. Seto rolls his eyes and pulls his phone from his pocket to dutifully ignore them, but Mokuba picks up his question and runs with it. "Why don't you guys just cut it? It must suck having to cram all that into a helmet for every drop."

Why, indeed. Bakura's hands in his hair still, tense and ready to take his cue from Ryou. It makes Ryou squirm, annoyed that his brother assumes he's going to break into bits over every little reminder of Amane—that she liked their hair this way, that she thought watching him try to comb out the tangled snake's nest of his hair after every shower was hilarious, that their mother cropped Amane's own hair to just below her chin so she would stop getting pencils stuck in it. Instead, Ryou leans back into his brother's knees and arches an eyebrow at Mokuba's own ragged mop. "I could ask you the same thing."

"I suffer for my aesthetic," Mokuba tells him, smacking his brother when he snorts and tries to hide his face behind his phone.

"I didn't realize wolf-boy grunge was a popular aesthetic." Mokuba whips around as Malik and Marik walk in and ducks under the outstretched hand intent on ruffling his hair. Malik looks at Ryou and Bakura and elbows his brother. "Why don't you ever help me with my hair?"

Marik tosses a glance over his shoulder as he picks out a staff. "I don't love you enough." He nods to Ryou. "Nice overhead swing, by the way. Meant to tell you yesterday."

Ryou blinks, surprised. "Thank you, I think."

"Mind showing me later?"

Bakura finishes off Ryou's hair with a snap of elastic and smirks. "You'll see it soon enough."

Marik smiles. "I'm looking forward to it."

Pre-match banter aside, Ryou watches with growing apprehension as the room fills with more and more people. He's practically twitching at each new arrival by the time Marshal finally steps in with the last few straggling onlookers, aware of every eye on him. Bakura may have put up with the military summits and medical poking and prodding for Ryou's sake (or for his own amusement or for a lack of better things to do during the apocalypse, Ryou wasn't sure) but it was Ryou's name on all the protocols and contracts and publications. T-BOM was his idea—and, consequently, as team after team after team died on his watch, seven years of tombstones lining up in his front yard, this whole façade was his fault.

Ryou spins his staff hand over hand again as Marshal starts to talk, explaining the parameters of the day's matches and running down the list of paired combatants. Ryou hears enough through the anxious buzzing in his skull that he's going first, but his opponent's name escapes him. Bakura's finger jabs him in the ribs and his brother arches an eyebrow when Ryou turns to look at him. Ryou shrugs. What is there to say?

"—and as always, four strikes mark a win!" Marshal claps his hands together and reaches for the roster. "Let's begin!"

/

It takes Marshal exactly seventeen seconds to call off Ryou's first match. Ryou knows this because he counted _every single one_ of them as he and Atem jerk around each other, trying to find a rhythm to even _start_ the match, let alone strike each other. They both attempt to slip into the same role of the training katas from the Ranger Academy and end up awkwardly mirroring each other—it's as painful to watch as it is to participate in, Ryou confirms, when he spares a glance at their audience and sees the expression on Bakura's face.

"That's enough," Marshal tells them, attempting to couch a grimace into something that oozed a bit more positive reinforcement. "We can shelve this pairing and move on, what do you say?"

Ryou and Atem can't get away from each other fast enough, and Ryou retreats over to his brother as Malik gets called up next. Bakura mutters something snide under his breath and Ryou mumbles in agreement, certain he'd find it funny if he wasn't so aware of everyone watching. But then, Bakura yanks on the back of his shirt to drops Ryou down onto the bench next to him, and if everyone wasn't already looking at him, they are now. "Bakura, _what?_ "

"You're angsting." Bakura's hand stays where it is, tangled in Ryou's top. Ryou very calmly and very patiently resists the urge to break his arm all over again.

"I am not _angsting_ ," Ryou hisses. "I'm just incredibly aware, unlike _some people_ , of the consequences of doing poorly in this."

His brother, Ryou notes, is too perceptive for his own good and too acerbic in his (supposedly) comforting delivery of, "It's not your fucking fault they died." He yanks Ryou's shirt again when he tries to stand. "It's not, and fuck Just-Marshal for implying it." Bakura grimaces in the vague direction of their CO and wraps a hand around his own stomach, and Ryou figures that he's still a bit bitter over Ryou's crowbar maneuver the day before.

"It's not your fault, certainly," Ryou allows, "but it's not your name on the paperwork." _You weren't the idiot that decided to live out your table-top game campaigns with real people as your game pieces._

"Goddamnit, Ryou—" Bakura heaves a sigh that ends up especially dramatic with the backdrop of Malik laying Atem out on the mat. Across the room, Seto glances at them and Ryou is suddenly aware of how conspicuous they're probably being. Bakura pinches him when he realizes Ryou isn't paying attention, and Ryou swats his brother in the cast, proving that they are both incredibly mature adults capable of having a conversation without reverting to violence. "Look, you can't make a Drift connection that's not there. You know this. I know this. And what's the worst that could happen? They kick us out?" Bakura snorts. "We'll go herd sheep in Siberia, fuck it."

Ryou can think of at least a dozen things, off the top of his head, which could count as 'the worst thing that could happen', but wisely, he doesn't interrupt his brother's hushed monologue.

Meanwhile, Bakura hums noncommittally and amends his previous statement. "Well, in what's left of Siberia."

/

Malik and Atem's match goes marginally better, if only because Ryou discovers that Malik is a dirty, rotten _cheater_.

Or, he would be, if he was cheating for himself.

Ryou glances over at Bakura to see if his brother shares his suspicions as Malik lets Atem get another strike, drawing them up to an even 3-3. Ryou winces. Malik is a half-foot taller than Atem and with longer arms to match, and yet somehow Atem seems to possess the supernatural grace to get under his reach to strike at Malik's ribs not once, but twice already.

This time, Ryou looks at Malik's brother but Marik's face is impassive, watching his twin with a blank, bored look. So that was no help. As if he could tell he was being watched, Marik meets Ryou's eye and winks. Ryou looks away sharply, just in time to see Malik land the winning strike by dropping Atem onto the mat with a solid smack. When he peeks back out of the corner of his eye, Marik is watching his brother again.

Malik helps Atem to his feet and grins, laughingly suggesting the glare from his jewelry was the deciding factor and cajoling a chuckle out of Atem. Honda frowns at them both as Malik takes a seat by his brother and Atem remains where he is; they're Drift-compatible by default, but Ryou wonders if he's not the only one who noticed something amiss.

He leans into Bakura again. "Did you—?"

Bakura doesn't look away from the training mats, but he murmurs. "Yeah, that was—"

"Strange? I thought so too."

"Think they're—"

"Up to something?" Ryou leans back against the wall and waits for the start of the next match. "I suppose we'll find out."

/

Ryou finds himself indebted to Marik, when—with apparently zero regard for his career as a Ranger or even avoiding being thrown in jail for disobeying a direct order—Marik pulls all eyes off of Ryou and onto himself. When called up for his match against Atem, Marik doesn't budge from where he's leaning against the wall, and Atem looks at him like he's especially dense. Another moment and Marshal, Bakura, the other Rangers, everyone but his own brother, is giving him the same look. Marik shrugs, chuckles, and says, "No."

Atem parrots him back, stunned. "No?"

Marik shakes his head. "Absolutely not," and there's no swaying him otherwise. Marshal spares him a withering look and leans over to consult with one of the technicians at his side. Whatever she tells him must confirm Marik's knee-jerk assessment—and while Ryou believes that first impressions could be indicative of whether or not a pair was Drift-compatible, teams like Bandit "Yes That's Really My Name" Keith and Weevil Underwood existed and thrived against _all_ odds —and Marshal doesn't push it. Instead, he just moves down the list to the next match.

Next to Ryou, Mai mutters, "It's probably for the best."

Ryou jumps and glances at her. "Excuse me?"

Anzu leans over to look at Ryou, too. "Do Marik and Atem really look like they'd be Drift-compatible?"

Ryou concedes the point.

/

Marshal calls off Ryou's second match as well, although Ryou suspects this time it's only to ruin his fun.

He and Malik, Ryou discovers, get along like a house of fire, spinning around each other in a clash of staffs and grappling that, from the side, probably looks like it was rehearsed. Their match ends 0-0 because neither of them can actually get a strike; every tackle ends with a roll back to their feet, neither of them able to keep the other on the ground for long enough to count, each staff blow blocked and countered and blocked again. It takes them both a couple of seconds to even register that they're being spoken to when the match is called, and Ryou realizes that he's actually having _fun._

Malik claps him on the shoulder when they split apart and even though it was technically an unprecedented result—Ryou's never _lost_ before, never managed to spend an entire match without beating his opponent into the dirt, or at least to a tie—he can see it on the face of everyone in the room.

He and Malik are Drift-compatible. Incredibly so.

/

In retrospect, Ryou should have known something was about to go wrong as he watches Malik leave the mats and whisper something in his brother's ear as they trade places. It sounds suspiciously like, "Be nice!"

Marik twirls on his heel to give his brother a thumbs-up and ask, "Aren't I always?" before turning to pluck a staff from the wall and stepping down to face Ryou. He spins his staff around like something out of a bad kung-fu movie and rolls his shoulders. "Any last words?"

Ryou leans up from his stretch and arches an eyebrow. "Are you fucking serious?"

"Those are terrible last words," Marik tells him, "But, I'm being completely facetious. Mm, perhaps only sixty-percent facetious." He waggles his eyebrows. Across the room, Malik groans and claps a hand to his face.

But facetious or not, the instant Marshal shouts "Begin!" Marik is gone, and Ryou barely has time to swing his staff up to block the blow aimed for his right cheek. He jumps back, staff raised to his midline in case Marik followed up with a low strike, but Marik was back to where he started, bouncing on his heels and grinning. Ryou tries to keep him there, just out of reach but not out of range of his staff, until Marik ducks his outstretched arm and stops with his staff an inch from the hollow of Ryou's throat. "One-zero."

Ryou brings his arm around to wrap around Marik's neck and press the end of his staff to Marik's jugular. "One-one."

Marik hums under his breath and disengages. Ryou lets him go and watches again, waiting for another trick. It comes when Marik's arm slides behind his back; he switches hands and the staff arcs towards Ryou's right ear from a left-handed thrust. But this time Ryou is more prepared and bats the blow away with his own staff in a clack of wood, and uses with the momentum to mirror Marik's last move. He jabs his weapon against the gold of Marik's necklace. "Two-one."

Then, before Marik has the time to retaliate, Ryou snaps his foot up to kick Marik squarely in the chest, intent on sending him flying and bringing the score to 3-1. Instead, Marik only stumbles back a step and wraps his hand around Ryou's ankle to _yank_ , so it's Ryou who goes flying. He skids to a stop across the room a few feet from Bakura, and when Ryou looks up, Marik's staff is an inch from his forehead. Ryou scowls, because he knows without a doubt Marik took the time to just stroll over. The smile darting across Marik's lips confirms it. "Three-two."

Swinging his legs up, Ryou kicks the outstretched staff away from his face and jumps to his feet, but Marik moves with the direction of his kick, spinning in a full turn to bring his weapon down again. Ryou ducks the blow at his head with single-minded attention and gets dropped again by the leg lashing out around his ankle. It knocks the breath out of him but he's loathe to let Marik pin him and tie 3-3. He rolls and Marik's staff misses his head again by scant inches, and Ryou takes advantage of the momentary pause to scramble back to his feet. Again. This is the most he's spent on the ground during a match since he was in training.

The kick he aims at Marik's staff gets him nowhere but Ryou didn't expect it to do more than give him room to breathe—out of the corner of his eye he can see Marshal debating interrupting and Bakura leaning forward, intrigued. Ryou and Marik have abandoned every semblance of a formal compatibility match and resorted to flat-out brawling. The adrenaline buzzes just beneath Ryou's breastbone and he's sure he's grinning as he steps into the first movement of the overhead swing he'd just promised he would show Marik. They make eye contact and Ryou can see that Marik knows, because he laughs and darts forward to engage.

Both staffs clash in unison, and Ryou grits his teeth against a jarring collision that doesn't come. Instead, his staff snaps in half under the impact and someone in the audience gasps. But Ryou is already on his heel to turn away from a counterattack, pulse pounding in his throat, knocking the falling end of his staff away with his empty hand.

Protocol dictates that in the event of damage to a training weapon, to protect both combatants and any spectators from injury that would prevent them piloting a Jaeger, the match must be stopped and the damaged weapon discarded and replaced before resuming.

Ryou swings anyway.

It's as he's coming out of his spin, head around first to spot, that Ryou realizes the blow that shattered his staff also sent Marik's flying away across the room, and that the jagged edge is aimed straight for Marik's throat, guarded by nothing but thin gold. His momentum is too much to stop his strike but this wasn't supposed to happen, he had expected Marik to _block_ —

Marik does, hand sliding up to catch broken wood against bare skin. Ryou's arm jerks to a halt with a twinge and they stare at each other for a moment, breathing hard, woozy with adrenaline.

And then the moment is over. Marik's hand splits open and drips blood on the floor, and Marik winks and says, "Good match."

/

Ryou doesn't get the opportunity to apologize as _profusely_ as Bakura knows he would after gouging a hole the size of a quarter into Marik's hand, mostly because their respective brothers whisk them off in the stunned silence following their match—Bakura drags him to the cafeteria and Malik, presumably, takes Marik to the medic.

He realizes about three left-turns from the Kwoon Room that he's not entirely sure _where_ the cafeteria is, but Ryou is still coming down from adrenaline and endorphins and probably a very tightly-lidded panic attack, so Bakura steers them in the direction of what smells like beans and hopes for the best.

It turns out to actually be beans, when they finally round the corner into the wide, blessedly-empty bay that made up both the cafeteria and rec room. Ryou's stomach begins to sing the song of its people and Bakura's joins in, so he deposits his brother at the nearest table and amasses enough baked beans and bread to feed a small army (of two, but if no one's around to yell at him, Bakura'll do what he damn well pleases).

Ryou's managed to find a book in the time it takes Bakura to get back—most likely left behind by someone at breakfast—and Bakura drops the tray in front of him with a bit more clatter than was strictly necessary. Ryou glances up blankly and turns back to the book. Bakura scowls. "Eat your goddamn beans."

Ryou mumbles something noncommittal and turns a page, but one hand sneaks out from behind the book to grope blindly for the spoon until Bakura takes pity and slides it into his fingers with a world-weary sigh. This is why he was the older twin; fuck all knows if Ryou was allowed to steep in his own perceived failings and self-medicate with literature, he'd weigh as much as one of his paperbacks and have a head the size of a Category II. He watches long enough to make sure Ryou doesn't poke his own eyes out or spill beans down his front before Bakura turns to his own food.

Something in the air of the room changes when Bakura has his back turned to Ryou to go up for seconds, and Bakura absently wonders if Ryou maybe did spill beans on himself after all. Instead, he realizes they're not alone as he turns back around and his hackles raise—Marik is sitting two tables away from Ryou with something that looks suspiciously like duct tape and cotton padding wrapped around his hand, fiddling with whatever it is he pulls from his pack. As Bakura heads back to his seat the vague shapes in Marik's hands materialize into a knife and a half-worked block of wood. Marik looks up when Bakura sits and waves with his uninjured, knife-wielding hand like it's the most normal thing in the world. A whittling, probably batshit-crazy brawler, a dissociating book-junkie, and his bean-eating brother walk into a Shatterdome, and Bakura hopes the jokes ends with no one else getting a new orifice in a random limb.

But as they sit, Marik doesn't jump onto the table screaming or fling his knife at Ryou in a half-baked attempt at payback. He just whittles away, humming something in probably-Arabic under his breath and brushing the shavings off to the side. Bakura eats his beans and covertly tries to figure out what Marik is whittling. Ryou occasionally turns pages between them.

It's exactly why it catches Bakura by surprise when Marik finally does speak.

"What's your Kaiju horror story?" Marik's still looking down at the wood, but the question is posed to Ryou alone.

Ryou finally looks up from his book. "Excuse me?"

Marik shrugs. "Everyone's got one."

Bakura keeps his head buried in his beans like this is none of his fucking business and tries to loosen the grip on his spoon that Oahu's Marshal Keahi once described as _murder weapon lite._ Across the rec room, Ryou regards Marik over the edge of his paperback, feelers out for the trap. Bakura rattles his spoon against the side of the bowl maybe a little louder than he needs to and watches his brother's eyes flicker to him for an instant. Then, "We had a sister."

Marik makes an acknowledging noise in the back of his throat and goes back to whittling. Ryou's brows knit together in the beginnings of what would be a dressing-down of epic proportions—Bakura hasn't heard Ryou say Amane's name in nine _years_ and this worthless piece of shit thought he could just—

"We had a brother."

That's all Marik says. That's all it takes. Bakura had almost forgotten who they were talking to, and as if Marik knows what he's thinking (and maybe he did, maybe Honda isn't that far off with his twin hive-mind idea) he rolls his shoulder and grins a bit lop-sided. "Everyone knows what happened to Lieutenant Colonel Ishtar." With that he straightens, packs up his shit, and is one foot out of the rec room before he turns back to look at Ryou, "We may be Jaeger royalty, but _fuck_ that crown is heavy."

Bakura scoffs as Marik retreats, scowling at the empty doorway for long after he's gone. "Well, isn't he a peach?"

Ryou smiles and looks back down at his book. "I like him."


	3. Chapter 3

**this chapter was slightly less teeth-pullingly difficult, mostly since it's been written since pretty much the very beginning (the idea coalesced and we sat down and pretty much wrote 20 pages right off the bat, so) and shit starts to get shippy.**

 _also, for anyone curious about timeline-wise stuff (and because ash obsessively checked this 800x while writing and is LITERALLY CHECKING IT AGAIN NOW AS I TYPE THIS ASH JFC, this story takes place in 2023, two years before the events of the movie. the first Kaiju attacks in 2013, the Jaeger Program is introduced in 2014 (with the academy officially opening in 2015, it looks like), ryou and bakura get involved two years into the program in 2016 and the T-BOM initiative is launched, and then seven years have passed to 2023, just as all of the Shatterdomes are starting to be shut down and the Anti-Kaiju Wall is partway under construction._

* * *

The Bakuras walk into the LOCCENT main bay just in time to hear someone roar, "That's my _brother!_ "

Now, Ryou has heard tigers roar, and gorillas roar, and giant interdimensional hell-beasts roar up close and far too personal, but he'd never considered that human vocal cords could bear the weight of that same sheer fury and mindless vengeance. They round the corner to find almost the entirety of LOCCENT on the bay floor in two distinct groups, and at his side Bakura snaps, "Fuck!"

As the mass of limbs crystallize into individual people, Ryou realizes that more than half of them are holding Marik back as he screams and slams his entire bodyweight against them to fight his way over to—

—to Malik, limp and unmoving on the bay floor.

Blood thunders in Ryou's ears and he finally notices the hulking, ruined Conn Pod of Duel Monster, all shattered glass and Kaiju blue smears and its pilot so, so small beside it. Ryou can see people scrambling behind the reinforced glass of the pod, unhooking Atem from his cradle and getting him onto a gurney. Bakura's arm brushes his in the crush of people and they move as one; Bakura turns on his heel to sling himself onto Marik, who's fought everyone else off, and Ryou shoves his way through the throng to get to Malik.

A path clears before him and Ryou drops to the deck to start pulling off armor, doesn't think about why he knows where the latches release and the pieces come apart, doesn't think about how many times he's had to do this, how many times there hasn't been a pulse under all that metal—but there is. This time there is, it's faint and thready but it's _there_ , even though Malik's chest is barely moving. Suddenly, Ryou can feel Marik pressed so close to look over his shoulder that he's plastered against his spine and he mutters, "Fuck, buy me dinner first."

He can hear Marik chuckle low against his ear, hear his voice crack with relief when Malik's eyes snap open incredibly dark against the pale and bloody smear of his face, but he doesn't move away. Bakura appears on Malik's left side and starts hauling off armor and snapping at bystanders get back, get help, get out, _do something_. Malik's becoming slightly more coherent and his fingers close tight around Ryou's wrist, which Ryou takes as an opportunity to pull off his gloves and finally disengage the rest of the forearm piece. There's a murmur of sound too close to his face, even in the din, and he realizes that it's him, talking to Malik in the most soothing voice he can manage, "It's fine, you're fine, you're alive, Atem's alive—" and _fuck_ , how he hopes that's the truth, "Marik's right here, you're going to be fine."

Malik's eyes are still glassy but he's grinning as his head lolls from the force of Bakura yanking off the rest of his torso plate. "Did you know Kaiju tails can grow _spikes_?"

Bakura freezes under the spotlight of Malik's attention and his eyes flick to Ryou, who realizes he has a front row seat to his brother attempting to be comforting, of all things. He finally chuckles and goes back to stripping armor. "You don't say?"

Malik giggles. "It was _bad._ Totally bl-blind—" he frowns when the word doesn't come to him, "surprised us. Got a spike right through the side of the Conn Pod." He tries to sit up but doesn't protest when Bakura pushes him back down, just moves his hand from Ryou's wrist to the hand Bakura's pressed to his chest. "My head hurts."

Bakura's undergone the same first responder training that Ryou has, and he's still calm, conversational, when he asks, "Can you tell me what happened?"

The crowd parts like rivers as the actual medical crew races in, and Malik's looking slightly more alert as more people work around him. They'd pulled up his visor but didn't take off his helmet in case of head injury, and Ryou sees it when Malik rolls his eyes to get a good look at one of the medics—the underside of his left eye is bloodshot. He knows exactly what's happened even as Malik says, "Kaiju tail went spiky halfway through the fight. Got us right in the face, hit Atem's cradle really hard and sort of fried? I think it fried, it might've gotten away but if it was alive why did it let us get away? I don't," he pauses, grits his teeth, fingers tightening on Bakura's wrist, "I don't remember."

A hush spreads across the crowd as they all slowly comprehend what's happened. Ryou and his brother stand as Malik is loaded onto the gurney. He still hasn't let go of Bakura's hand. Ryou presses, "And then?"

Malik scowls at him, like the answer is obvious. "And then I got us _home_ , what the hell do you think?"

Stunned silence reigns. Bakura moves to step back but Malik doesn't budge on his grip. "Um?"

The lead medic gives him a once over, eyes lingering on where Malik's got an iron grip on him. "Looks like you're coming along for the ride, kid."

Ryou laughs under his breath at the panicked look his brother throws at him as the medics wheel Malik away. It's as he turns back to the remaining people in the bay that he realizes there's no one breathing down his neck anymore, and that Marik didn't follow his brother out.

Instead, Marik is standing a foot away and _seething_ , fist clenched at his sides and eyes fixed on where Marshal just walked into the room. His voice, however, is nothing but calm. "That was my brother you sent out there to die."

Marshal frowns. Doesn't realize how much danger he's in. "I sent him out there to do his job."

Marik's eyes shutter closed and he takes a deep breath. "You sent him out there to deal with a Category III with a copilot you knew he didn't pair well with. You sent him out there with a neural handshake that was barely stable, in an _apparently_ subpar Jaeger, as bait with backup halfway down the coast—you know," Marik chuckles and doesn't sound the least bit amused, "I'm not seeing anything you actually did right, here. If I were there—"

"As I understand the situation," Marshal cuts him off, "if you were there, Malik could've been planning your funeral when he woke up."

Something in Marik's jaw twitches and he takes a step forward, but so does Ryou, slapping a hand on Marik's chest so hard he feels it reverberate down his arm. Marik's eyes snap down to his, livid. Ryou presses harder, takes a step in front of him to block out Marshal entirely. The adrenaline is wearing off and this anger is something familiar, something he can deal with. "Let's take a walk."

Marik takes one more look at Marshal before following Ryou out of the bay and down the hall to the nearest empty room. Ryou has barely shut the door before Marik is looming over him in a way that, in any other situation, would actually be really hot. "What the _fuck_ was that?"

"That," Ryou says, blood rushing to his face in what he hoped he could pass off as irritation, "was me keeping you from being court-martialed for assault. Something," he adds loudly as Marik opens his mouth again, "that your brother would definitely not be pleased to hear about when he wakes up."

There is a beat of total silence before Marik sags to a crouch and runs his hands through his hair, gripping hard. "He could've fucking died. He might still die; he piloted a Jaeger back to shore on his _own_." He rocks back on his haunches and looks up at Ryou like he's got the answers.

Ryou doesn't, so instead he drops to the floor and lies down, resting his cheek against the cool cement and patting the space next to him. Marik looks at him like he's grown a second head but lies down next to him after a moment. Ryou lets the silence hangs between them for a while longer before murmuring, "Malik wouldn't have been sent out there with Atem if he hadn't cheated the Kwoon Room."

Marik stills next to him, but he isn't angry like Ryou had expected. He sounds wry instead. "Noticed that, did you?"

Ryou hums. "I did, and so did Bakura. Atem's a great fighter, but Malik had the advantage of longer reach." He takes a deep breath, enjoying the stretch of his ribcage. "There were two points Atem shouldn't have scored. I'm just trying to understand why."

Marik's jewelry clinks as he shakes his head. "You know the Jaeger Program is on thin ice." He waits for Ryou's agreeing murmur to continue, "The Kaiju are getting bigger and it's taking more Jaegers to take down each one—Blue Eyes and Duel Monster were dropped this morning and the Kaiju still got away. My sister, Marshal Mutou, and Marshal Pentecost in Alaska are at the end of their rope and if T-BOM folds, that's another table leg knocked out from under them."

"So after my and Atem's shit-show of a match," Ryou fills in, "Malik knew we needed as many pairings as possible. He knew you were going to turn down the fight, I'm sure, as well as that if they actually weren't compatible after all a neural handshake trial would prove it."

Marik slings an arm over his eyes, and his fingertips brush Ryou's where his arm is stretched over his head, but Ryou is loathe to move it. "There are eight lone pilots left in T-BOM," Marik says, "and if we can find a way to pair them up that's four more Jaegers. We need that." He rolls over to look directly at Ryou and yup, their fingers were practically laced together. "Thank you, by the way, for not letting me get court-martialed for assault."

Ryou clears his throat and sits up, fiddling with the collar of his shirt. "No need to thank me."

"Now, I'm not sure about that." Ryou turns to look down at him, not sure of what exactly he heard, but Marik is already standing and offering him a hand. "So, do you know where the infirmary is? I haven't the fucking foggiest."

Ryou leads the way, but it isn't until he's already gotten them halfway there before it occurs to him. "What the hell do you mean? Where did Malik take you after our spar?"

Marik grins, cheeky, and waggles his mostly-healed hand in Ryou's face. "Oh, that? That just took a pair of tweezers and some duct-tape, don't you worry about me."

Ryou stops short and looks Marik up and down. "Idiot."

He slaps his injured hand over his heart and laughs when Ryou rolls his eyes at him. "You wound me." Marik pauses. "Again."

Ryou stalks off, leaving Marik to lope after him down the hall. "Should've let you get court-martialed."

/

Ryou leaves Marik in the infirmary with his brother—breathing, conscious, hooked to more machines than Ryou cared to think about but _alive_ —and wandered off to find a book, some food, and his brother, preferably in that order.

He finds his book in his room and his brother in the mess hall with Mai and Mokuba, shoveling food in his mouth like the world was ending. Well, like it was ending right this very second. Bakura gestures for him to sit. "Where've you been?"

Ryou shrugs. "Went to check on Malik." It's not exactly a lie.

"I heard Marik threatened Just-Marshal." Bakura, Ryou notes, is still wearing the tank top and sleep pants he ambled into LOCCENT wearing this morning, and is on his third cup of coffee. Actually, he's wearing Ryou's sleep pants, the ones he'd gotten Ryou for their last birthday as a joke, and doesn't seem to mind having _THAT'S WHAT I'M TOLKIEN ABOUT_ emblazoned across his crotch.

"Not in so many words." Ryou sets his book down and reaches for Bakura's mug, ignoring the hand his twin swats in his direction. He frowns. Bakura's coffee is cold and burnt, just the way his brother likes it because he is an _animal_ incapable of good taste or wearing his own goddamn clothes. "It was, however, heavily implied."

He hears Mai start to respond and abruptly stop, but before Ryou can turn to her, confused, arms reach around him to set something on the table in front of him. "It would've been more than implied, had I not been so rudely interrupted and pulled from the room."

Ryou looks down at the helmet resting on his book and then back up at Marik. "That's not a Drift helmet."

"No, it's not."

"This is a," Ryou's brow furrows, he takes a guess, "motorcycle helmet?"

The corners of Marik's lips curve up ever so slightly. "It is. It's for you."

Next to him, Ryou can feel Bakura's eyes on him, can't tell if his twin is amused or irate but he doesn't turn around to check. "I'm flattered."

Marik really does smile now, laughs rich and loud. "Put it on, we're going to town."

Ryou waits a moment, makes it look like he's actually considering it, then stands and tucks the helmet under his arm. "Why are we going to town?"

They're out of the mess hall and nearly down to the garages before Marik decides to deign him with an answer. He's just this side of too close to Ryou as they get off the elevator, and he smirks when he tells him, "I'm buying you dinner."

/

Dinner turns out to be in literally the smallest restaurant Ryou has ever seen, tucked between two crumbling walls in the middle of the Kaiju slums. Their knees knock together when they slide into opposite sides of the booth. Ryou grins. "I've heard the phrase before, but I didn't think you'd take me to an actual hole in the wall, Marik."

Marik shrugs. "I like it, it's cozy." The woman who sat them hovers for a moment, grumbling, running a hand through Marik's hair and plucking at his worn hoodie in a gesture Ryou can only describe as motherly, before smacking him in the shoulder with the menu and gently handing Ryou his.

As she takes off back toward the kitchen, Ryou watches her go. "Are you a regular?" He didn't remember seeing in their dossier that the Ishtars had ever been stationed in Domino before.

"Of sorts. I try to come once a week or so. The pork dumplings are great."

"This a popular spot?" As popular as anything on a coast, especially in the slums, could be.

Marik grins and says again, "Of sorts. You know Pegasus?"

Ryou arches an eyebrow and slowly lowers his menu to look Marik in the eye. "The black market Kaiju parts dealer?"

"The same."

"I've heard of him," Ryou answers. Then, even though he's not sure he wants the answer, he asks, "How do _you_ know Pegasus?"

Clicking his tongue, Marik's grin grows wider and he flips his menu back up. "I'm not sure I should say, after all that hard work you did keeping me from getting court-martialed."

Ryou was right, he hadn't wanted to know. The woman comes back again for their order—pork dumplings, Marik insists—and as she plucks their menus from their hands, smacking Marik with his again, Ryou sees Marik watching him. "Yes?"

He shrugs. "Your Japanese is good."

"Ah." Ryou spreads his fingers across the tabletop, enjoying the stretch for a moment. "Well, I am half."

"Oh?" Marik cocked his head to the side. "I wouldn't have figured, given the hair." He chuckles when Ryou gestures at Marik's own blond hair. "Though I'm sure you get that a lot."

Ryou hums something noncommittal that he assumes passes for an answer. "Yours is good, too," he says.

"Ample time to learn."

"Did you grow up here?"

Marik shakes his head. "No, in a small village in Egypt, way out by the ruins and the dig sites." An odd expression settles on his face for a moment, distaste or disgust, Ryou's not certain, but it's gone before he can figure it out. "Very old traditions." When Marik looks up again, he smiles. "I actually learned a little Late Egyptian, we were so close to the tombs."

"Wow, my dad would've loved you." The words are out before Ryou can think them all the way through and realize how _awkward_ they sound. He flushes and glances over Marik's shoulder at the entryway. "Hah, um, he was an archaeologist."

Marik hesitates. "Was?"

"Huh? Oh!" Ryou throws his hands up. "No, no, he's fine. Just—busy. Since the war, he started working on restoration. Lots of moving around. We still keep in touch, though."

The woman comes back with bowls of dumplings literally the size of Ryou's face, and the steam curling up around his bowl and dissipating out across the table makes Ryou's mouth water. Marik murmurs thanks as she goes by, and laughs when he sees Ryou's expression. "Honestly, that explains a lot." Ryou looks at him expectantly, and he elaborates, "How you and Bakura got into the Jaeger Program so young, if your dad was always busy."

It's an astute enough observation that it makes Ryou uncomfortable. He pokes at his dumplings. "How did you and Malik get into the program?"

They both focus on their food for just long enough that Ryou thinks Marik may not answer, that he may have asked too personal a question, but Marik chews and swallows and grins. "About that. My sister is grateful to you, actually."

Ryou fumbles with a dumpling and drops it back into the bowl with a splash that manages to spray broth all over his shirt. "She—what?"

"For the minor-restriction protocols," Marik explains. "We turned fourteen the month before T-BOM launched, but because of those protocols we had to wait to enlist. By then Isis and Rishid were already pilots, so Malik and I started working with the technicians." He picks up another dumpling. "We were kind of like puppies, following Isis and Rishid to their different Shatterdomes, doing repairs on their Jaeger—the first time we split up was after Malik and I officially enlisted and we were shipped up to Korea. We still do most of the repairs on Daddy Issues ourselves."

Ryou finally puts a dumpling in his mouth and it's exactly as good as Marik promised. "I'm sure Seto was thrilled to hear that."

"Oh, he was ecstatic. The design is his, though, and he made us read the goddamn manuals only around a hundred times before he let us anywhere near the core." Marik leans back in his seat and his feet tangle with Ryou's. "But we've been around." His face is sly. "Plenty of time to learn Japanese."

"Tokyo Shatterdome?"

"Domino, actually. We were techs here, met Atem and Yugi through Marshal Mutou." Marik jabs a chopstick at him. "You?"

"Hawaii, by way of Tokyo, then Samoa, then Chile, then Vietnam, then Oregon in the United States," Ryou trails off and chuckles. "It's, uh, been a long seven years. Hawaii and Tokyo were the longest, two years each."

Marik whistles, impressed, and they each turn their attention back to their bowls. The silence isn't awkward or stifling, Ryou notes as he chases the last dumpling around in the broth, and Marik doesn't feel the need to fill it with meaningless chatter. They finish their meal in the same pleasant quiet and it isn't until they've settled the bill and slipped back outside that Ryou looks at the motorcycle and hesitates.

Marik follows his gaze, then sticks his hands in his pockets and looks up at the sky. "I don't know about you, but I don't remember Marshal Marshall giving us a curfew." He tilts his head at the empty stretch of beach where the ruined buildings peter out into sand and rubble. "Want to take a walk?"

Ryou stares, not sure that he's heard right. "You want to take a walk?"

"Sure."

"On a beach?"

"Mmhm."

"In the middle of a war with giant sea monsters?"

Marik arches an eyebrow at him and grins. "I won't tell if you won't."

Just in case he was still unsure after Marik _caught a broken staff with his bare hand_ , Ryou decides that this confirms that his new friend is absolutely bugfuck crazy. He shrugs and wanders over to the sand, Marik trailing after him. The sand isn't wet this close to the buildings and it sifts around his boots as they walk, leaving a rippled track in their wake, the ocean a dull roaring to their right. "I don't think I've been on a beach for fun in at least a decade," Ryou confesses.

Marik kicks up a gust of sand and the wind sweeps it back at their legs. "I think the first time I ever saw the ocean was when we arrived at the Hong Kong Shatterdome, straight from Egypt." They walk a little further before he asks, "What did you used to do for fun, before the war?"

Ryou flushes and glances over at the ocean. He clears his throat. "Do you remember those tabletop games? The role-playing ones?"

"Yeah?" Marik sounds surprised, but not snide. "Like HeroQuest? Or that one about dungeons?" He smiles, sheepish. "I've heard of them, but I don't know how to play."

Oh, he's said the magic words.

Ryou takes a deep breath that Marik interpret correctly as _you've gone and asked for it now, friend_ and spins around to walk backwards facing Marik, arms spread wide to gesture emphatically. "Okay, so, it's not technically about dungeons—"


	4. Chapter 4

**one of these chapters i'm going to be able to start off an author's note with "this chapter was NOT like pulling teeth" but it is not this chapter**

 _this chapter took so goddamn long despite a lot of it being plotted out already because i didn't think we were fleshing out enough people as we'd wanted to, so there was a whole lot of dialogue overhaul. mostly i just want to be done looking at this chapter, haha_

 **it also came to our attention that folk may not be super familiar with Pacific Rim (thanks,** **ARandomWeirdo and ilovemanicures for the head's up) and so parts of the crossover are confusing. PacRim actually has a super detailed wiki you can check out (thanks to GdT), but suffice it to say that the basic plot is that when aliens come, they actually come from a rip in time and space in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean instead of space, and set about generally making life really shitty for humankind and trouncing every pacific coast city they can get to. humans decided that the best way to fight them was with giant robots (think Gundam) except piloting a robot on your own will basically kill you because of the strain, so the load is shared between two pilots that basically mind-meld. we try not to go super-heavy with all the tech terms from the movie, but a few that are good to know is that the Conn Pod is the Jaeger's head where the pilots are hooked up, the Drift is what they call the mind-melding, and for this chapter and the next, chasing the RABIT (Random Access Brain Impulse Triggers) is getting trapped in a memory instead of focusing on the Drift. also, also, PacRim is available to watch online on putlocker and the like in high-ish def, and i would highly recommend watching it because the movie itself is just very cool.**

 _also, y'all don't want to know how many goddamn times we watched THIS SCENE (watch?v=eiNVjkJDsqI just plug that into google, it should pull up the correct video) to get the fucking setting right. which wasn't exactly a massive hardship, considering how much i love the music in this movie._

* * *

The lone good thing about Malik and Atem's first drop (Kaiju clobbering and near-death experience notwithstanding) was that the attack had come in before everyone was awake, with no one but LOCCENT and Blue Eyes aware that they were coming to assist.

Ryou and Malik are not given this same consideration, and their Drift-compatibility test is scheduled for two in the afternoon.

 _Everyone_ shows up.

Malik, possessing of a stubborn streak to rival Bakura's, had wheedled himself out of the infirmary and back to active duty in record time for someone who solo-piloted a Jaeger from just past the Miracle Mile all the way back to shore. Even Atem, who took the brunt of the initial shock, was still in a wheelchair for another week under threat of a court-martial (from their CO) and severe bodily harm up to and including amputation (from Yugi). That, however, hadn't stopped him and _literally every other Ranger_ from crowding LOCCENT and the bay deck to watch Ryou and Malik get crammed into their Drift suits.

Out of possessive, older-twin habit or perhaps still reeling from the last disastrous drop, Bakura and Marik scare away the technicians and start gearing Ryou and Malik up themselves, riveting them into their suits. Ryou and his brother are used to slapping on most of their armor on their own, anyway, but there's always the push and snap when someone hooks them into the spine clamps and the entire suit clicks and locks into place, ready for uplink to the Jaeger. Bakura's hands linger for a moment on Ryou's shoulders after he hooks the spine into place and squeeze before Bakura moves back to stand with the rest of LOCCENT. Clearly, all of Ryou's assurances that this was just a test and the War Clock was nowhere near countdown had fallen on deaf ears, if Bakura's thunderous scowl was anything to go by.

Ryou slips his helmet over his head and bounces on his heels as it pressurizes and the visor clears, glancing over as Malik does the same. They're both anxious, Ryou doesn't even need the Drift to tell, as they step into the Conn Pod and fit themselves into their cradles.

"Good afternoon, Rangers!" Marshal's voice pipes in with a hiss of the communications system as Daddy Issues boots up around them—most Rangers were passably familiar with Marks III and IV, so the more practice they could get in the Ishtar's Mark-V, the better. Ryou was just excited to work in something that didn't have parts as old as he was. "Are you ready?"

To his left, Malik clips his boots into the mounts that would connect to the Jaeger's legs. "If we say no, can I go back to sleep?"

"No." Seto cuts into the feed. "Ryou, did you—?"

"Read up on the latest diagnostics and hardware comparisons between the different Jaeger Marks and models?" Ryou finishes, flipping on his row of switches. "All three hundred pages."

Seto's distinct lack of amusement translates perfectly from LOCCENT, but then there's the distinct sound of a scuffle that may or may not be a person being bodily shoved away from the mic and Jounouchi speaks next. "Alright, let's get this show on the road! Data relay gel's dispersing in the circuitry suit, handhelds should be coming online," steel rings of control buttons, holographic readouts, and neural calibration arrays swing up from the underside of the cradles to hook onto their hands, Ryou's right and Malik's left, "and we're engaging the drop."

It's all familiar from here, the Conn Pod securing around them, technicians sealing the outer doors shut and Drift arrays prepping to transmit data between the pilots. Ryou and Malik exchange an apprehensive look, one that Ryou tries to temper with a (hopefully) reassuring smile, and then reaches up to tell LOCCENT, "Release for drop."

It's always a bit jarring when the Conn Pod drops several stories from LOCCENT to where the Jaeger body is stored in the dock below, and no matter how controlled the descent, Ryou's stomach still tries to crawl up his throat—whether it's residual nerves before a Drift even after all these years or the fact that Ryou, like a Jaeger, needs to have his head screwed on in order to properly function, it's not a sensation he's fond of. The Conn Pod slows to nearly a crawl as it approaches the rest of Daddy Issues and rumbles as the head locks in firmly to the rest of their war machine, turning left and right to be sure of the smooth connection. Above them, the AI reports, _"Coupling confirmed."_

From LOCCENT, Marshal orders, "Engage pilot-to-pilot protocol."

The AI begins rattling off protocol specs as the Jaeger calibrates and lights up around them, the XIG Supercell Chamber core—KaibaCorp's pride and joy—humming beneath their feet. Daddy Issues' visor clears and loads their outside view just as the dock doors open to reveal the ocean.

The AI announces, _"Pilot-to-pilot connection protocol sequence,"_ and the entire Jaeger rocks under them as the dock rolls forward to move the Jaeger towards the door. The clanking, pounding, whirring cacophony of the Shatterdome gives way to nothing but ocean air and waves that crash against the metal of their feet.

Where Ryou and Bakura would've had to punch in activations to finish the calibration on Tomb Raider, Malik just consults the read-out on a display to his left. "Daddy Issues, ready and aligned."

LOCCENT explodes into a flurry of sound as a dozen voices speak rapid-fire one after the other and Ryou leans back into his cradle and attempts, against all odds, to relax. "Prepare for neural handshake—handshake starting in fifteen seconds— _neural handshake, initiated—_ "

And then, Ryou and Malik inhale as two separate people and exhale as _one_.

At first, it always feels a bit like being submerged to the neck in wet cement, even though Ryou knows that's just the initial resistance of the datastream catching up to his nervous system. Then it's gone, and Ryou feels the Jaeger like it's his own armor, fitted tight and perfect. He curls his—its—their fingers and feels the movement ripple up his carbon-steel arm though hydraulic veins and iron pistons easily the size of his human body.

Above them in LOCCENT, Jou comments wryly, "Don't go chasing any RABITs, now."

 _Oh._ Ryou had almost forgotten, so used to Bakura to his left that he'd almost completely overlooked the new mind meshing with his. Malik's life washes over Ryou in a flicker of half-formed impressions that are easy enough to observe and let go— _four children sliding down a sand dune and laughing, Jaeger Academy barracks and classrooms and simulations, Malik and Marik in a Shatterdome mess hall in Korea staring at a cell phone on the table between them_ —without chasing the RABIT, without latching onto a memory so intently he gets tangled in its wake. Malik's look through Ryou's head is about the same, wandering through a nondescript childhood and cookie-cutter apocalypse fallout, complete with a dry stint at the Jaeger Academy.

Malik hears Ryou's assessment of his own mind (or feels it, more specifically) and snorts, amusement coiling between them like physical warmth. The AI marks off neural handshake progress and Ryou resigns himself to a few more moments of meandering through Malik's head, but then—

But then he skips over something in Malik's memory, like the stone in the center of a cherry or a locked door, bouncing Ryou off before he can get a good look at it and then it's too late, the uplink is complete and Ryou's pulled back to the present.

He frowns, disoriented and confused. The Drift was designed to overlap two people completely to bear the brunt of controlling the body of a giant machine, and as uncomfortable and awkward as that may be, it was supposed to bear _everything_ up for scrutiny, every memory, every moment, every miniscule detail of a person's life so that they could find enough in common to operate as one. Ryou can't begin to understand how an entire chunk of someone's life could be edited out so completely as to leave an actual, tangible gap in its wake, let alone how it would affect their connection—

But regardless of his concerns, the readouts must be fine when Jou looks them over. "Neural handshake strong and holding."

There's an awkward pause where Ryou realizes they're expecting his response as Pilot One. He clears his throat. "Right hemisphere, calibrating."

Malik responds, "Left hemisphere, calibrating."

 _"Proofed and transmitting_ ," and the Jaeger comes alive under them, _as_ them. Malik and Ryou step forward, off the dock and into the water, sinking into the sand and scattering wildlife. Holographic readouts swarm in front of them, reporting water depth, radar, real-time diagnostics, shuffled to the side when Ryou blinks twice to get a clear view of the ocean before them. To their left, Domino stretches out, deceptively peaceful-looking for beachfront property during the apocalypse.

Everyone in LOCCENT must've breathed a collective sigh of relief because when the comm comes back on, Marshal sounds decidedly lighter. "I think we can call that a success, wouldn't you say?"

Ryou wouldn't, actually, but he's careful not to let his suspicions filter down the neural bridge back to his copilot. "What're our orders?"

"Take a walk," Honda pipes in, most likely monitoring their readouts next to Jou as Ryou and Malik move through the water, kicking up twenty-foot sprays. It's not the first time Ryou's heard those words in relation to an Ishtar brother, and he scowls. Honda continues, "Just get your bearings, wander around a bit."

"We'll be up here keeping an eye on you," Marshal adds. Ryou thinks that it's supposed to be comforting instead of ominous, but their CO doesn't quite pull it off.

 _Yeah, that didn't sound creepy or anything._ When Ryou whips around to look at him, Malik shrugs sheepishly and says out loud, "Sorry. Marik and I usually bypass actually speaking when we're linked up."

"It's fine," Ryou tells him, attempting to recall every mindful meditation blurb he'd been force-fed during training to keep from crawling out of his skin. "You just surprised me." He'd have to look at the research when they got back to shore, because Malik looked so _normal_ , seemed like a relatively decent person, and _yet_ —Ryou shrugs, piston-shoulders shrugging around his ten-ton head, birds circling the rocket-launcher ports across his sternum. "Let's go take that walk."

 _/_

They're at the bottom of the ocean, doing laps around the bay before Ryou realizes the anxiety creeping between his ribs isn't just the newness of a Drift with someone who isn't Bakura or even his lingering concern over the _literal gaping hole_ in Malik's head. He turns to watch his copilot as they trudge across the seafloor, rolling their shoulders and clapping their hands and generally making a giant, mechanical idiot of their Jaeger. "Is something the matter?"

Malik jumps, startled, and the plating across their energy cell core shifts and resettles. There's something frenetic and strained pressing against the curve of Ryou's spine now, so when Malik doesn't respond, doesn't seem to hear him, Ryou reaches up and very calmly mutes their comm connection to LOCCENT. "Malik?"

"It's nothing." Malik's attention is on one of the holo-displays, but Ryou can tell he's gritting his teeth.

Ryou frowns as they side-step the reef and head into deeper water. "Are you sure?"

"I'm _sure_ ," he says, though he sounds anything but, the hinges of his gloves squeaking with the strain of his grip on the handheld.

It filters across their Drift before Malik can think to control it—the world narrows around Ryou, it's suddenly harder to draw air, the Conn Pod seems like it's pressing in on all sides—Ryou gasps, caught off guard. "You're claustrophobic?"

They stand in steely silence for a minute, like Malik is waiting for Ryou to say more, to make a comment. Instead, Ryou goes back to running diagnostics, marveling at how much of the Mark-V's systems were automated and AI-processed. Finally, Malik asks, "That's it?"

"Hmm?"

A school of fish dart in front of the Jaeger and as one, Malik and Ryou reach up to brush them away. "That's all you're going to say?"

Ryou smiles absently, checks the coolant circulation. "I couldn't swim until the Jaeger Program. First day of training, the ex-Navy SEAL instructor literally threw me into the pool." He laughs. "Bakura had broken his nose by the time I managed to haul myself out, soaked to the bone and bearing a stunning resemblance to a drowned rat."

At that, Malik chuckles. "Drifting with Bakura must be something else, huh?"

"It certainly is something." Ryou agrees. He can feel amusement curl between them, but also—relief? "It's a bit like looking in a fun-house mirror, isn't it? Piloting with them, I mean. It's like watching your own life, being in your own head, but upside-down and two feet to the left."

"It is." The school of fish has returned, this time intent of examining the Jaeger's visor. "This is different than what I'm used to," Malik admits. "Quieter. Calmer."

 _Ah._ "Marik has a loud head?"

Malik barks a laugh. "Something like that." Ryou arches an eyebrow, waiting for him to elaborate, but it isn't until they finish the final lap and turn back to shore that Malik adds, "You're not a fucking psychopath, for starters."

"That's—" _an interesting word choice, rather emphatic, the beginning of a shitty story,_ "—not a very nice thing to say about your brother."

Marik laughs again, sharp and a bit bitter. "Yes, well, you could say Marik is a bit more enthusiastic about killing Kaiju than is strictly necessary."

"Wait until you pilot with Bakura." Ryou chuckles and shakes his head. "It's like sharing headspace with Freddy Krueger."

"Who?"

Ryou pauses halfway through testing the right wrist's range of motion. "Freddy Krueger." Malik doesn't look any less confused. "Nightmare on Elm Street? It's an American—" Ryou cuts off with the uncanny sensation that he was talking to a brick wall. "My point is, Bakura likes to hit first with an unnerving amount of gusto and ask questions later and I'm sorry, but—have you _never_ heard of Freddy Krueger before?"

Malik's face is completely deadpan when he says, "I didn't watch a lot of American cartoons growing up."

Ryou doesn't even try to stop the wall of affront and horror he barrels at Malik across the neural bridge and Malik just laughs. "You realize you could just _show_ me what it is, right? I _am_ in your head."

"It's not the same!"

They lapse into an easy (and mortally offended, on Ryou's part) silence for a while before Malik asks, "So Marik took you on the bike?" When Ryou blinks, confusion pulsing between them, he adds, "It was sort of on your mind, sorry."

Malik shares the memory of a garage, cracked cement surrounded by miles of sand, and Ryou can feel motor oil rubbed across his palms. "The bike is yours?"

"Built it from scratch," Malik tells him, "not that Marik's got an ounce of respect for the fact that it's _mine_ , and certainly not my problem that he wrecked his back in Peru—" he cuts himself with a world-weary sigh that Ryou himself has made more than once in his life when talking about Bakura. "How'd you like the ride? Smooth, right?"

Ryou passes along the memory of nearly splicing Marik in half with how hard Ryou had gripped his waist on their ride into the city, face pressed against Marik's shoulder to avoid watching Marik take turns nearly parallel to the road, wind shrieking around them.

Malik, because he's an asshole with literally zero social skills _just like his brother_ , starts laughing so hard Ryou can feel tears prick in his own eyes. He huffs. "Well, not all of us can be a Hell's Angel."

Malik's face is sweetly blank when he asks, "The who?" and Ryou doesn't curb the wave of loathing that curls between the two of them. This, of course, makes Malik laugh even harder.

"Something you want to share with the class?"

Ryou and Malik look up as their comm system buzzes back online, Bakura's sniping piped straight into their helmets. Malik grins, winks at Ryou. "Sharing twin horror stories, you know how it is."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean, Isht—" something that sounds a lot like Seto Kaiba clearing his throat echoes over Bakura's snarl, and when he speaks again, Bakura is surly but resigned. "Right, whatever. While you two've been gabbing, we mocked up the compatibility test schedule—Marik and I go next, Malik and I later tonight, and Ryou, you and Marik are slotted for tomorrow morning, yeah?"

Malik whistles. "No rest for the wicked?"

"The sooner we can confirm your compatibility," Marshal has the mic now, "the sooner we can begin to apply your results to the rest of T-BOM."

And fuck, if that doesn't just take the wind out of Ryou's sails. "Right. Of course." How could he forget?

There's a brief wash of irritation that skirts Ryou along their Drift, but he realizes it's not aimed at him when Malik asks, "Well, if that's all, then?" and then switches off the comm system without waiting for a reply. He turns to Ryou and grins again, cheeky. "So, I take it this Kroger guy isn't a cartoon?"

Ryou has the sudden and intense suspicion that he is being fucked with.

/

Ryou fucking takes off the second he's clear of his gear and brushes past Bakura with a really lovely frown on his face. Bakura briefly considers making a comment about his twin's distinct lack of love for him but decides he'd really rather keep living with all of his limbs intact for a while longer. "Where the hell are you going?"

His brother runs a hand through his bangs, still scowling at the wall. "I need to look something up."

Okay, so Bakura can't resist getting just the one dig in. "You're bailing on my first time with another man for a _book_?"

But Ryou doesn't rise to the bait and it's Bakura's turn to scowl. Something wasn't right. Ryou looks up at him, finally, then over his shoulder to where Malik is helping Marik into his gear for the next drop. "You have a Drift scheduled with Malik after this one with Marik, right?"

"Yeah," Bakura says slowly, "nine-o-clock tonight to test the new night-time vision filter Seto designed. Same deal as you, just a walk around the bay." He glances over his shoulder at Marik and Malik, suddenly suspicious. "Why?"

"It's just—" Ryou shakes his head, runs a hand through his hair again. "It's nothing. Have fun."

"Ryou, you can't just say shit like that and take off—" Except apparently he can, because Ryou's turning the corner and down the hall out of LOCCENT before Bakura's even done talking. With a huff, he storms over to where the techs have wheeled out his armor and lets himself be shoe-horned into the equipment.

"You ready?"

"Oh yeah," Bakura drawls, cramming on his helmet so he doesn't have to look at Marik's sly face, "I'm thrilled to get all up close and personal with the inner workings of Marik Ishtar."

It isn't until they're completely strapped into the Jaeger and the AI has already announced " _neural handshake, initiated_ " that Bakura remembers that getting up close and personal with Marik meant that Marik would be, any moment, trawling through Bakura's brain and kicking up all the silt and looking under every rock at all the things the Pan Pacific Defense Corps would be better off not knowing about him.

Bakura manages to grit out, "Oh _shit_ ," and then the uplink is complete.

And then Bakura realizes just how _poorly_ this could go, realizes he's not exactly the most kosher Ranger on the books, that his compatibility with Marik is only theoretical—they've never sparred or run a simulation together—realizes exactly how much is riding on the hope that he doesn't fuck this up, like he's fucked up everything else—

The Drift is built in a feedback loop to double back on and amplify each pilot until they were literally bowled over by each other, until the Venn diagram of their minds had been crammed into just one circle, so Bakura sees Marik see Bakura covered in blood too many times to call it self-defense, too many times to call it anything but a fucking _hobby_ , honestly, years and years of going a bit too far and getting a bit too angry, sees Ryou's face after yet another bar fight, another stroll through a bad part of town, another scramble for supplies that doesn't end peacefully, sees Jaeger Academy instructors mark down _enthusiastic_ on his sparring dossiers with frowns and the battery of psychological testing that always followed. He sees Marik just brush it off and move on and Bakura can't understand why and then—

And _then_ the memories aren't his at all, and he is ten years old and sinking a knife into his father's throat while his sister and brothers look on and—

 _Oh._

Bakura grins, memory-deep in blood and screams and that _rush_ he knows so well and it's not even his this time.

He and Marik are going to Drift just fine.

As if he knows what Bakura is thinking—and he does, now, now that they're nothing but an interwoven mesh of muscle and bone and nerve—Marik shoots him a toothy grin as the AI reports, _"Neural handshake, holding."_

Bakura sinks back out of Marik's memories and relaxes back into the metal nest of his cradle as their Jaeger is rolled out into the ocean. He turns to see Marik looking at him and chuckles, "Daddy Issues is one hell of a joke, Marik."

Marik snorts and runs through the vision filters on the Jaeger's visor, their scenic ocean view shuttering and resetting with each setting. "Shut up, you pilot a tin-can called _Tomb Raider_ like an old-timey, analog—"

"Old-timey—?"

"Alright boys, bonding moment over," pipes Jounouchi from LOCCENT as the Conn Pod lights up around them. "You're clear to head out."

They stomp out into the sea and Bakura starts pinwheeling their arms for lack of a better thing to do, feeling the differences between this Jaeger and his own like he's been slid into a new skin. Next to him, Marik is still fiddling with something on the HUD displays that hover in front of them, calibrating the radar or something equally tech-savvy in his shiny new Mark-V, and Bakura wonders if they really need to talk at all or if they can just run the test in silence and call it a day.

Eventually, he runs out of ridiculous arm motions to try out as they submerge that wouldn't ends up on the news as the Jaeger Program condoning assault and battery on the local marine life, and he watches dolphins skirt their knee, chattering to one another. He and Marik are in each other's heads so he doesn't need to speak. He does it anyway. "This is," Bakura pauses, "nice."

Marik hums in agreement, but doesn't say anything more.

Which is fine by Bakura, honestly. Marik's mind is like playing with sand, nothing stays in one shape for very long, staying still long enough for him to get a glimpse of a hand, or a knife, or the sound of a call reaching voicemail _again_ , and Bakura wonders what his own mind looks like, can't believe he'd never asked Ryou about it before—

"It's like an oil slick."

Bakura looks up, jarred out of his thoughts and absently waggling his fingers at a particular curious school of tuna. "What?"

Marik is still looking ahead, eyes fixed on another diagnostic display. "Your mind. It's like an oil slick—looks simple enough until you walk up to it, and then it's seven hundred things and once and it doesn't mix well with others." He gestures absently and the Jaeger's hand sends the school of tuna scattering. "Since you asked."

"I didn't." Looks _simple?_

"You were thinking it." Marik smothers a laugh, shakes his head. "Sorry. I'm used to there only being one bad twin per giant robot."

Bakura arches an eyebrow. "Bad twin?"

"The dark and twisty ones," Marik elaborates with no small amount of derision, "not like them, not the ones with the good intentions. They're the ones who decide to enlist as Jaeger techs so they can at least help _somehow_ before they age into the Program, or walk into a summit meeting and launch an entire new subdivision of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps." Marik glances at Bakura. "We're the ones who're just along for the ride, figure having them in your head will help you with that fucking temper everyone tells you you've got, but it's just another way to survive, right?"

Bakura thinks that Ryou may have been trying to warn him about the wrong Ishtar brother. "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about."

And suddenly the Conn Pod gives way to a memory—Bakura's not chasing the RABIT, not quite, but he watches himself, eleven or twelve, kicking the shit out of a guy twice his size and even from this angle, watching his own recollection from the side, he can see the grin on his own face. He lets the memory go the way it came, and pointedly doesn't look at Marik when he surfaces back to the present. He knows they both saw it, isn't entirely sure Marik didn't pluck it out of his head himself.

Bakura doesn't look, but he can hear the smirk in Marik's voice. "I'm sure you don't."

/

"If I hadn't seen it for myself, Ryou, I wouldn't have thought such a pretty face could be so cold."

He is never going to finish this book, Ryou concludes, and he tries very hard not to heave a melodramatic sigh for all the good he knows it won't do him. "Pardon?"

"You." Marik is leaning against his bunk when Ryou looks up, perfectly at home like he fucking belongs there, and this is what Ryou deserves for leaving the door to his room open. "I spent the afternoon bouncing around in your brother's head."

Ryou grits his teeth. Well, _shit_.

Marik smiles, still very placid and only the tiniest bit amused. "Tell me, did you realize how fucked up he is before or after you two Drifted the first time?" Ryou doesn't say a word, eyes steely. Marik shrugs. "It makes sense, I mean. War's on, people tend to look the other way when the blood is Kaiju blue— 'Overkill in Oahu', I should've guessed—"

"And I'm sure if the apocalypse was postponed, you'd be a model citizen?" Ryou tries to school his face into a scowl and is only partly successful as he watches Marik's expression slide from stunned to sly to—to coy?

Marik pushes away from where he leans against the bed frame and the motion (somehow) leans him close enough to make eye contact and smile, sweet and slow. "Oh darling, I'm not saying any such thing." He leans closer still. "But would you?"

Marik is long gone, door shut behind him when Ryou scowls into his paperback _. "Darling?"_

And then, because Ryou has a long-standing suspicion that Kaiju personally conspire to make his days worse, the alarm begins to wail.


	5. Chapter 5

**this chapter brought to you by seto kaiba sincerely regretting letting bakura and ryou anywhere near his robots**

* * *

 _One of your teeth is fake?_

Bakura laughs and sends a memory of a solid left hook and the sound of a drill humming into his jaw, laughs again when Malik shudders. He can feel it down his own spine, almost can't believe how quickly he and Malik have abandoned actually speaking, swapping memories and sensation like they'd been at this for years. _Ryou's never taken my shit._

 _Good man._ Malik clenches and unclenches his hands and they both feel the Jaeger move under them. Bakura can't help the brief flash of relief that he's sure Malik picks up on when his healed arm doesn't so much as twinge—unfortunate tan line aside, the medical staff cleared Bakura for service yesterday morning and he'd been too keyed up over Ryou to think of it during his Drift with Marik earlier. Now he and Malik were halfway through the basics to make sure no one turned the other's brains to hash and he has yet to collapse into a puddle of pain and tears.

 _What do you think?_

Bakura glances away from the readouts of the seafloor, all neon holograph and shiny chrome. He shrugs and the Jaeger shrugs with him _It's not Tomb Raider, but it's nice._

"You _asshole_ ," he startles Malik into speaking aloud. "You mean to tell me your Mark-III trashcan is better than my baby?"

"I didn't say it, but I'm certainly glad you agree."

"Jesus _Christ,_ Bakura!"

They step closer to the edge of the continental shelf, the steep drop and open water only a hundred feet away. Bakura flicks his wrist and the handheld ring pulls up a radar analysis of the ocean in front of them and tinkers with it a moment, turning it to and fro. "Okay, fine, I guess it's cool you can manipulate the holograms." The far corner of the radar indicates something five miles out on their two-o-clock. When Bakura zooms in to check it's gone. "Even if it is glitchy as all hell."

Malik snorts. Bakura's radar flickers again. "Don't be bitter just because you can't read it."

Bakura frowns, consults his readout again, wonders if maybe he is too much of an old dog to handle the new Mark-V tech. He comms in to LOCCENT. "Hey, Seto? I think your robot is broken."

Seto responds before Bakura even moves his hand away from the comm controls. "What the fuck did you do, Bakura?"

"Nothing!" He watches the blip in his radar blink closer and then vanish altogether. Next to him he sees Malik pull up his own radar. "There's just this thing on the radar, I think it's a glitch?"

"I swear to god, you're like a hurricane in a Drift suit, how the hell did you—"

"No, he's right," Malik cuts in, doing something fancy to spin the radar and lay it flat in front of them. "There's something here." He stops and Bakura feels dread like a literal stone in his gut flicker between the two of them. "In the water with us."

There's a sound, then, that echoes through the Conn Pod because the comm line is still open—a sound that Malik and Bakura are intimately familiar with, having been in LOCCENT to watch a Jaeger launch for battle more times than they can count. "Kaiba," Bakura says, nice and calm even though he can feel two heartbeats speed up in his chest, "what was that?"

"It—" More yelling from LOCCENT now, Jounouchi swearing heartily in the background.

"Because it _sounds_ an awful fucking lot like the War Clock."

Seto sounds much less smug now, which would be a boon at literally any moment but this one. "Bakura—"

"Seto fucking Kaiba, if the next words out of your mouth are _it's a Kaiju_ , I'm going to—"

The ocean being the marvelous conductor of sound that it is, the unholy shriek reaches them just before Bakura spots the sinuous twist of _monster_ in the dark water somewhere ahead of them. "Fuck."

Seto crackles across the connection. "It's a Kaiju."

Bakura is robbed his chance at a truly clever comeback when Jou shoves his way onto the mic. "The War Clock wasn't due for another _week!"_

"Tell it to the fucking Kaiju!" Bakura snaps as they stomp back up the continental shelf toward the shore. The vents shuck open the second they're not fully submerged anymore and two miles to their left Bakura sees the curve of leathery spine slice through the water. They've been spotted. "How close are we to shore?"

"You're five miles past the Miracle Mile, about twelve from shore."

They wait but the water around them is still for a minute, two. "And where the fuck is the Kaiju?"

Three hundred feet of leathery alien bullshit surfaces a half a mile away and Malik can't help the bark of laughter. "Never mind, don't answer that." He looks at Bakura. The Jaeger thrums under them. "Ready?"

Bakura clenches their two-ton fists. The Kaiju spots them and shrieks. "Two drops, two Kaiju attacks? You are the _worst_ luck."

And then they're slamming their fist down on the face of the monster rising up to meet them.

Bakura's had psychologists and war veterans and biochemists explain it all to him before—the feedback loop of adrenaline that ramps up his fight-or-flight response and streamlines it directly to _fight_ (lectures the biochemist), coupled with a standoffish father and his sister's traumatic death (sympathizes the shrink) and the fact that the apocalypse stars motherfucking sea monsters that you can actually put your fist to and defeat, that it isn't something like famine or disease or nuclear armageddon (says the war veteran)—

To sum: Bakura likes to hit things.

Kaiju, as it happens, are great to hit. What with their ample size and numerous appendages and general distaste for human life, people cheer when you scrape a Kaiju into the sea floor. He and Ryou are really very good at it—it's kitschy and a bit ridiculous if Bakura thinks about it too hard but they really are two halves of a whole, if the whole is made up of coldblooded ruthlessness and severe anger management issues.

He and Malik, on the other hand? Not so much.

Part of this is because Kaiju have been, since the moment they crawled out of the soggy portal to hell they call home, incredibly averse to being clobbered. It interfered with their hell-bent goal of flattening every semblance of civilization they came across, and research showed that they didn't take kindly to three hundred foot tall, weaponized robots showing up to drag them back into the deep, and that they tended to respond to such attempts with all manner of teeth and claws and occasionally electric-shock tail whips.

Which is to say, part of it is definitely the Kaiju's fault. The other part, however, as Daddy Issues stumbles through a turn and narrowly avoids having its power core eviscerated by claws longer than Bakura is tall, is because Malik and Bakura can't seem to get their shit together. The point of the Drift is for two people to move as one, but Bakura feels like he's in a three-legged race tied to a bag of doorknobs, can only tangentially feels Malik battering about in his head under the weight of his own adrenaline rush, of how familiar a feeling it is to just _hurt_ something. The Kaiju strikes at them again and this time they manage to get their arm up in time, wrenching the monster away and fumbling a return attack—Malik activates the wrist cannon and Bakura goes for the retractable sword attachment and Daddy Issues groans under the conflicting strain and their wrist socket spits sparks.

Bakura scrambles for Ryou's calm, so used to it pressing behind his own eyelids but instead Malik's as wired as he is and Bakura can't breathe, can't keep his head above the roaring. The whole world narrows to the Kaiju in front of them, all soft spots and underbelly and gaping maw, ducks and feints and strikes that don't connect to do enough damage—Bakura's shaking so hard he can hear his cradle rattling, hears Malik gasp next to him as he catches the backlash of Bakura's panic—

It's the plasma cannon fired right over their heads and the resulting Kaiju shriek—how did it get so _close_ they didn't even see it coming they could have _died_ —that snaps Malik and Bakura back to themselves. Harpie Lady swerves out from behind them in a spray of sea water and driftwood, Mai crackling across their comm, "Boys!"

The other Jaeger is already throwing down a fist as the Kaiju tries to surface, so Malik and Bakura swing around to flank it with a blow of their own. When the Kaiju twists its neck around to sink teeth into Harpie Lady's arm and alligator-roll, Bakura slams Daddy Issues' foot down on its chest until he hears it crack under the weight of Jaeger steel. The sea floods electric blue around them and the Kaiju, mercifully, doesn't get up.

Anzu crackles across their comm. "You alright? That got a bit close, guys."

Malik surfaces from Bakura's screaming maelstrom of a mind and yanks their foot from the Kaiju's ribcage. "Yeah, we're good." He doesn't look at Bakura. _Right?_

"Yeah, yeah, we're good," Bakura says, more to himself than to any of the other three pilots. "How'd you scramble so fast?"

Harpie Lady clamps a massive steel hand on their shoulder, and disoriented and still red around the edges, Bakura stumbles under the weight. Daddy Issues wobbles. "We've been launched and waiting since you left the bay. Just in case."

Choppers appear on the horizon, which means the clean-up crew isn't far behind, and behind even them are Pegasus' scavenger boats. The Jaegers turn and slog back to shore. "Just in case?" Bakura jabs at the comm panel. "Real show of confidence there, LOCCENT."

"Shut up." Leave it to Seto not to sound the least bit relieved that they survived. "How badly did you wreck my Mark-V?"

Bakura starts to snap back at him but his voice catches, heart still hammering hard enough that he can feel it in his throat. He can't quite get enough air and his vision prickles with little lights. "Fuck off," he manages, grits his teeth and keeps putting one foot in front of the other.

"Bakura, are you alright?" It's Honda. "Your heart rate's not coming back down."

All of the holograms on Bakura's side of the Jaeger are flickering, his hands shaking too hard and overwhelming the motion detectors in his gloves and handheld. Malik's concern is a flickering press against his periphery but Bakura keeps his eyes on the approaching shore and takes a step. Takes another. "Oh yeah. I'm fine."

/

It takes the collective efforts of Mokuba, Yugi, Jounouchi, and Marshal, the threat of calling Ryuuji and Isis in the Los Angeles Shatterdome, and Seto physically shoving them into the Conn Pod to get Ryou and Marik to agree to their Drift as soon as Daddy Issues and Harpie Lady reported the kill. The technician shoe-horning him into his suit looks about ready to kill Ryou as he fidgets, and the instant they clear him to get in the harness he opens the comm line to Daddy Issues. "Bakura? You alright?"

"Yeah," responds Malik, who is absolutely _not_ who Ryou asked, "We're good."

"That's nice." The Conn Pod drops and the floor shifts under his feet as they connect to Tomb Raider proper. "Bakura?"

"Yeah, fuck, we're alright," Bakura snaps, sounding the least alright Ryou's ever heard him. "Live to fight another day, real bonding experience, whole nine yards."

Next to him, Marik opens the line to his brother and presumably has the same conversation with Malik in Arabic. The bay doors roll open and Ryou can see the hazy outlines of the two Jaegers stomping back to shore, their docks already open and waiting for receive them. The Conn Pod thrums as the core starts under them. "We can postpone our Drift."

"No, you can't, not if you want Just-Marshal off your ass," Bakura tells him. "Besides, I'm up to the eyeballs with babysitters at the moment. I'll see you when you get back."

"Bakura—" The comm line crackles off. "Well." Ryou starts to run a hand through his bangs and ends up smacking his helmet instead, and just decides to scowl until he feels better. He hopes Marik hasn't just seen it.

"You alright there?"

Oh, for fuck's sake of course he'd seen Ryou making an ass of himself. "Yes, fine, thank you." Their Jaeger jerks to a halt just outside of the Shatterdome and Ryou does a once over. Best to just get this over with. "Tomb Raider, ready and aligned."

"Excellent," says Marshal from LOCCENT, "Neural handshake in fifteen."

"So," Marik says, checking his handheld as the AI counts down, "I know why they threatened to call Isis, but why Otogi?"

Ryou rolls his eyes. "He loves bad puns."

"And you—?

"Do not appreciate being called at three in the morning every night for a week to be told bad puns."

Marik laughs. "I see."

 _"Three, two, one—neural handshake, initiated—"_

It's the first rule of Drifting to _fucking_ _relax_ —verbatim from the former guerrilla fighter who ran their simulations—but Ryou enters the Drift suspicious and off-kilter. His trawl through the neural connection literature had turned up nothing that could explain the gap in Malik's mind short of "intense emotional trauma, indicative of PTSD or dissociative fugue states", something Ryou knows from Ryuuji's pilfered dossiers on the T-BOM pilots that Malik did _not_ have. They wouldn't have cleared him to pilot if there was the slightest indication that he was the psychological equivalent of a time bomb. Besides, Ryou tells himself as he slips into Tomb Raider like an iron alloy skin, there's no way Marik's mind can be anything like his brother's.

Marik's mind isn't anything like his brother's. Ryou had expected an onslaught of memories and sensation and neuronal feedback but instead Marik's mind is placid and calm as still water. Calm as a mirror, Ryou thinks, because where Malik's mind has a piece punched out Marik's is _covered_ , like it's been wrapped in opaque plastic just before the guests came in, enough to get a brief impression of what's underneath without getting their grimy fingerprints all over it.

 _And here you thought I wouldn't be a model citizen,_ Marik comments, echoing in Ryou's skull.

This is fucking _impossible._

The lack of anything in Marik's head for him to connect to means Ryou's mind is up for double the scrutiny. A memory of him, eight and putting together the first RPG set he's built on his own, washes over him and he fights his way out from under it. Then it's him and Bakura scrambling up a hill, both of them yanking at Amane's hands to tug her up after them and Ryou gets caught for a moment in the smell of the grass and the sound of someone saying his name before he can surface again, before he can keep the memory from dragging him under. But there are more of his own memories where there should be Marik's and it's like water rising over his head and this time he slips under, can feel a leather armrest under his palm and hear typing through a thin glass door. The Conn Pod slides away entirely and in its place—

 _"Pilot One out of alignment—neural handshake compromised, right hemisphere is out of alignment—"_

It's the boardroom. Not _a_ boardroom, but the first one, the one Ryou could close his eyes and describe down to the brand of a packet of cookies a friendly secretary had pressed into his hands as he sat there and waited for Brigadier General Isis Ishtar and Marshal Sugoroku Mutou and Marshal Stacker Pentecost and actual _world leaders_ to file in and decide to let him play god with nearly a decade's worth of _children_ —

"Ryou." Marik's voice is gentle, like he's soothing a spooked animal or a particularly excitable child, and Ryou might as well be—he's chased the RABIT, got caught in his own head like a goddamn trainee. Sucked Marik in with him to watch his greatest mistake in perfect hi-def recall. "Adorable as this pint-sized version of you is, we need to go."

A hand closes around Ryou's arm, heavy and real, just as the memory of him turns to Bakura and murmurs, _"Maybe this was a bad idea."_

The ghost of his brother grins, all teeth and snarl, and props his feet up on the boardroom table. _"Well they already gave us free food, so we can't exactly bail."_ Then, quieter, " _It'll be fine, Ryou."_

 _"We're children, Bakura."_ God, has he always been this weak? Ryou remembers this conversation almost verbatim, but from the side he can see how hard his own hands were shaking.

Memory-Bakura snorts. _"Tell you what, if they turn you down I'll dive into the sea and fistfight the next Kaiju myself. It'll be a huge press scandal and I'll be memorialized as a martyr and you can appear on the news and talk about how the rejection drove me to it."_ He shrugs. _"They might as well stick us in a Jaeger now and save themselves the PR fees."_

Ryou remembers this part best; it's his favorite. The ghosts of him and his brother whip around in their seats when the voice of Marshal Pentecost says from the doorway, _"Well, with an incentive like that, how could we say no?"_

The hand on Ryou's arm shakes him, hard, grip tightening until he can feel it through his Drift armor. "Ryou, come on. Come with me, we have to go." The memory around him starts to fade, washing away like chalk in a storm, and the interior of the Conn Pod coalesces in its place. Marik is grinning at him from the other cradle. "Welcome back."

"I—" For a moment, Ryou can still taste the cookies. He clears his throat. "Sorry."

"Happens to the best of us."

 _Not to you, apparently,_ Ryou wants to snipe but holds his tongue just in time, does his best not to broadcast it down the neural handshake, _since you haven't got anything in your head at all._

If he does a poor job of hiding his thoughts, Marik doesn't let on that he's heard. Ryou decides in his one redeeming quality in this entire fiasco.

The rest of their test is coma-inducingly dull in comparison; the jaunt around the bay nondescript and relatively short, cut on account of the War Clock malfunctioning. Marshal tells them, as they haul themselves back into the dock, that all open-sea maneuvers are officially on hold until they could get in touch with the other Shatterdomes.

Ryou's certain he approximates an answer in the ballpark of appropriate and makes a beeline for Seto the moment he's peeled the last of his armor off. "Have you seen my brother?"

Seto shrugs. "Peeled off down the hall."

Marik walks over to them. "And mine?"

"Went off after him."

Maybe it's the leftover Drift connection or maybe Marik's some sort of mind-reader, because he says what Ryou's thinking. "Oh, I'm sure that's going to end well."

/

Bakura's plan, immediately after hauling his ass out of the Jaeger, is to make a beeline for his room and sit very, very still and very, very quietly until the screaming maelstrom in his head subsides. It's a great plan—a fantastic plan, even—and definitely one Ryou would approve of, if his tone and the stilted wave Tomb Raider gave them when they passed each other in the bay were any indication.

It's a great fucking plan—until Malik decides to follow him all the way out of LOCCENT and halfway across the Shatterdome like he's trying to earn the dog collar right out from under Jounouchi.

Bakura spins on his heel and Malik nearly runs right into him. "Do you fucking _mind?_ "

Malik, clearly, doesn't. He's inches away from Bakura's face and Bakura is struck with the (terrible, terrible, _terrible_ ) urge to throttle him with his own jewelry. "What the _fuck_ was that, Bakura?"

"That," Bakura snaps right back, "was us dealing with the world's worst blind date and _this_ ," he turns back around and makes to storm off, "is me fucking leaving."

"The hell you are!" Malik's fingers close vice-tight around his arm and jerk him to a halt. Bakura literally sees red and every single instinct still blaring the five-alarm bells from the Kaiju fight comes screaming back to him.

God _fucking_ damnit, Ryou's going to be so ticked off.

It isn't until after he's shoved Malik into the wall and sidestepped the kick aimed for his shin that Bakura considers the wisdom of brawling in the middle of the base literally three hallways away from LOCCENT, and it's that pause that gives Malik the chance to barrel into him, sling his arms around Bakura's waist, and knock him flat. Bakura's head cracks on the floor and he sees black this time, he's so fucking _pissed_ and Malik is _right there_ —

Malik hoists him up by the shirt and smacks him into the floor again, sitting on his chest and pulling back a fist in warning. "Bakura, I swear to god—" he lets the threat hang.

Bakura turns his head to the side and spits blood, says nothing.

Malik's weight on his chest borders on agony when he leans forward and Bakura grits his teeth. "What the _hell_ was that? If you're on something and didn't tell me before we got in the Jaeger—"

"What? No," Bakura wheezes, air hissing out between his words. "I'm not fucking _on anything_ , and get the hell off of me!"

"Not a chance."

"Malik," Bakura's practically choking now, "get up. I can't breathe."

"Oh." Malik looks down at him like he's remembering for the first time that he weighs approximately _two tons_ and slides off of him. Bakura sits up with a groan and his head spins, but when he tries to get his feet under him to stand, Malik's hand wraps around his wrist and holds him still. "Oh, no. You're not going anywhere until you fucking explain." Bakura opens his mouth and Malik talks right over him. "You could've killed me in the Jaeger—fuck, you could've killed me right now. And you're going to tell me what's going on, or I'm going to find Ryou."

Curse Malik and his perceptive little ass—Bakura sucks in another breath, lets it out in one melodramatic huff, and grimaces. "I have anger issues."

"You don't _say._ "

"Hey, did you want story time or not?" Malik nods. "Then shut the fuck up." Bakura scowls at the floor like it's the concrete's fault. "It's—huh, let me see, they wrote it up all nice and wordy for me during my last eval—it's 'characterized by explosive outbursts of anger and violence that are disproportionate to the situation at hand with impulsive aggression that's unpremeditated and disproportionate to the provocation'." He shakes his head. "That's the fancy way of putting it, though. Seven years ago we just called it being a jackass."

Malik mulls it over. "Yikes."

Bakura chokes on a laugh. "Yeah, that's another way to put it, too. Ryou, uh, he used to call it the Shadow Realm, to explain it to our sister—that it wasn't me, I was gone somewhere and there was this _thing_ in my place who really, _really_ liked kicking the shit out of people, and—" He pauses. "I'm going to be honest, this isn't the reaction I was expecting."

Malik cradles the back of his head and hisses at the sting. Bakura realizes he probably hit his head against the wall and decides it serves the little shit right. "I can start freaking out, if you'd like."

Talk about _yikes_. "Please do not."

"That's what I thought. Do you—" Malik pauses, makes a face, "I don't know, do you meditate? Take pills?"

Bakura sucks air through his teeth and presses his back to the wall until he can feel the door rivets dig into the spaces between his vertebrae. The whole world is still hazy and he can see Malik's hand in the corner of his vision and all he wants to do is _break_ it—he laughs, shaky and wild. "No, no I don't take _pills_ ; they don't let people who take _pills_ drive giant fucking robots, it's an insurance hazard."

Malik slides to the ground next to him and rests his chin in his hand, his expression considering. "I don't know about that. They let Yugi come back."

The haze clears and the taste of copper crawls back down his throat. Bakura slots the pieces together: benched but no cast, no sling, no surgeries, nothing to keep an able-bodied Ranger away from a Jaeger—"Well, shit." Bakura sits up straighter. "And they're keeping him?"

Malik shrugs, shifts closer to Bakura until their shoulders and knees bump together. "There's only three pairs left in T-BOM, not counting those next-gen triplets in China. We're a dying breed. The world is full of roofs to jump off of and pills to swallow, so they figure he'll be safer under Shatterdome quarantine for now."

"And because he's less likely to go AWOL in a Jaeger if the other pilot is his brother, or someone else's."

Malik whips around to look at him and Bakura is absurdly pleased at the sardonic laugh he earns. "Yeah, that too."

They sit pressed together in silence and listen to the overhead announcements until someone reports that Tomb Raider is back in the dock. Bakura clears his throat. "Just now—that was—shitty. That was shitty of me." He hopes the sorry is implied. It seems to be, because Malik's smile doesn't falter as he stands and helps Bakura to his feet and—and slings a solid left hook at Bakura's jaw so hard he can taste titanium. He wheezes a laugh around his sore jaw as Malik's arm settles around his waist and pulls him close. Like, really close. Bakura steadfastly _doesn't_ notice how they slot together like puzzle pieces and slings his arm around the pilot's shoulders. "I probably deserved that."

/

Ryou doesn't even look up at him when Bakura walks back into their room with a bruise blooming purple on the side of his face. He looks like he's trying to decide what to open with before he settles on, "I hope you deserved that."

Bakura startles, guilty, before he remembers that his brother is just using freaky twintuition and not the remnants of a Drift connection. "Shit. It was my bad."

Ryou goes back to reading, and is it just Bakura or does he sound too resigned to the fact that his twin's stumbled in bloody-lipped and bruised? "What did you do?"

He slumps down onto the floor, too lazy for the trek to his bunk. "Tried to kill Malik." Ryou actually closes his book and sits up, and Bakura's seen that look on his face too many times: they're nine and if that guy looks at Amane _one more time_ ; they're ten and Bakura shows the landlord exactly where he can stick his reaching hands; they're eleven and Bakura decides he likes the way that violence fits on him like a second skin, like an _armor_ ; they're thirteen and Amane's been dead a year now and Ryou says _brother I have an plan_ —"It's fine. He's fine."

"Are you fine?"

If he brushes Ryou off he'll end up with a book to the teeth, so he thinks it through. "I'm good. A bit jittery and shit's a bit red at the edges, but good. Malik calmed me down." _By beating me into the concrete_ , he doesn't add because it won't help his case.

Ryou says, "Did he now?" and something about his tone, so soon out of a Drift and temper just barely put to rest, rubs Bakura the wrong way.

He digs his fingers into his knees. "That's the point, isn't it? Keeping me _calm_?" He's picking a fight now and he knows it; he may really end up with a book to the teeth after all. "Only you would climb into a giant robot to rehab your brother's anger issues."

"That's not—"

"It is!" Wherever that calm is that Malik inspired, it's evaporated under the heat of being the subpar twin. "You finally found me something I could hurt and get a commendation instead of getting my ass kicked, yeah? I've gotta hand it to you, Ryou, I'd never really thought about it before but everything worked out just the way you wanted it to, didn't it?"

"Need I remind you," Ryou says, very cold and very calm and so very unlike, so much _better than,_ Bakura, "that there's a fucking war? That we were _attacked_ by monsters from the bottom of the goddamn ocean and honestly, I had bigger things to worry about than you and your penchant for violence?"

Bakura laughs and his jaw aches and the pain spurs him on. "Oh please, Ryou, fucking spare me. You don't give a shit about anyone you don't like, let alone any kind of noble ideas about saving the world! You," Bakura tells him, "are just like me. Your people suit just fits better."

He was nearly right, Bakura amends, as he scours the Shatterdome kitchen later for ice—the book Ryou hurls at him catches Bakura right in the eye.

* * *

 **so the diagnosis/evaluation in question bakura is referring to is intermittent explosive disorder, and i would personally like to meet whoever decided to abbreviate the disorder characterized by sudden, uncontrollable anger as IED...and ask them if they thought the joke was really, truly worth it.**

 **also, the distance the miracle mile (the last-ditch perimeter to keep a kaiju from making landfall) is from shore was never really elaborated on in the movie. all that's mentioned is that it's closer to shore than the ten-mile cordon from shore, so we just decided that the miracle mile would be about seven miles from shore.**


End file.
